Apparent evolution of vertebrates. This diagram represents the abundance of vertebrate groups over time. The dotted lines are the missing links required by evolutionary theory to link these groups. These links have not been found in the fossil record.
of a standard text on evolution, admits, ‘How they arose, presumably from reptiles’ scales, defies analysis.’27
Even at the beginning Darwin knew that he faced profound problems. The development of complex organs, for example, strained his theory to its limit. For until such an organ was functioning, how could it be sufficiently advantageous for natural selection to encourage it to endure? As Professor Gould asks, ‘Of what possible use are the imperfect incipient stages of useful structures? What good is half a jaw or half a wing?’28
Or perhaps half an eye? In the back of Darwin’s mind the same question had arisen. In 1860 he confessed to a colleague that, ‘The eye to this day gives me a cold shudder.’29 As well it might.
The final example – proof if you will – that natural selection, if indeed a valid mechanism for change, has more to be understood, is the case of the waste-disposal habits of the sloth given by Dr Wesson:
Instead of defecating on demand, like other tree dwellers, a sloth saves its faeces for a week or more, not easy for an eater of coarse vegetable material. Then it descends to the ground it otherwise never touches, relieves itself, and buries the mass. The evolutionary advantage of going to this trouble, involving no little danger, is supposedly to fertilize the home tree. That is, a series of random mutations led an ancestral sloth to engage in unslothlike behavior for toilet purposes and that this so improved the quality of foliage of its favorite tree as to cause it to have more numerous descendants than sloths that simply let their dung fall…30
Either evolution has other modes of ‘natural selection’ that we have not yet even guessed at, or something else entirely must be used to explain the abrupt scatter of the fossil record – a cosmic sense of humour perhaps?
Irregular Evolution
The problems with the fossil record have been known from the very first. For a century or so scientists simply hoped that they would go away, removed by some discoveries which bridged the gaps. Or, perhaps, by the discovery of certain proof that the gaps were caused by an intermittent geological process rather than any problems with evolution. Eventually, however, the strain became too much. The consensus broke in 1972 when Stephen Jay Gould and Niles Eldredge jointly submitted a radical paper to a conference on evolution.31 Their paper directly contradicted Darwin’s theory.
They put forward the argument that even though the fossil record was certainly far from satisfactory, the observed abrupt appearances of new species was not evidence of an imperfect fossil record; rather, it reflected reality. The origin of species might not be a gradual evolutionary process but a process in which long periods of stability were occasionally punctuated by sudden massive changes in living forms. By this argument, Gould and Eldredge could account for the absence of ‘missing links’: they held that they did not exist.
However well this idea might account for the fossil record, it is still based upon a perspective which holds life’s development to be random, by chance. Yet it can be demonstrated that evolution, however it may have occurred, is unlikely to have been a random process.
The instructions for the plant and animal forms are contained within the genetic code. This code is complex and the amount of variation which could be involved is immense. Could this code have evolved randomly? A simple look at the figures suggests that it could not have done. If, for example, a monkey sat at a typewriter striking a key every second, how long would it take, by chance, for this monkey to create randomly an English word twelve letters long? The answer is that, by chance, it would take him almost 17 million years.32
How long would it take for this same monkey to produce, randomly, a meaningful sentence in English of 100 letters – a chain much less complex than the genetic code? The answer is that the probability is so low, the odds against it exceed in number the sum total of all the atoms in the observable universe.33 Effectively, it is impossible for a meaningful sequence of 100 symbols to be produced by chance. We must conclude that it is similarly impossible for life’s complex genetic code to have been produced by chance as the theory of evolution would require.
The astronomer Fred Hoyle, never one to suppress a pungent phrase, wrote that the chance creation of the higher forms of life is similar to the chance that ‘a tornado sweeping through a junkyard might assemble a Boeing 747’.34
If, then, the genetic code is not arrived at by a random process, then it must be arrived at by a non-random process. Where could this thought lead us?
Directed Evolution
In 1991 Wesson’s Beyond Natural Selection threw a new and powerful challenge into the arena. He dismissed the attachment to Darwinian evolution as ‘indulging the old daydream of a universe like a great clockwork’.35 Wesson points out that we cannot look at any animal in isolation. He proposes that we should consider a wider perspective: ‘organisms evolve as part of a community, that is, an ecosystem… which necessarily evolves together. One might better speak not of the origins of species but of the development of ecosystems…’36
In a truly radical move Wesson suggests that we apply the findings of Chaos Theory to evolution in order to make sense of all the staggering oddities which we see both in the fossil record and in living creatures today.
Creatures of Chaos
Chaos Theory is a means by which very complicated systems – such as evolution – might be understood. But understood as a whole, not broken up into pieces as is usually the case.
Normal physics is baffled when trying to understand and predict behaviour in such complex systems as weather patterns, the turbulence of water as it rushes down a pipe, or population growth – to give but a few examples. Chaos Theory has created a technique which is able to capture the underlying structure of such apparently random events which make up these systems; a structure which appears as a pattern.
The Chaos explanation was discovered in 1961 by Dr Edward Lorenz, a scientist working on weather prediction. He had decided to repeat a computer sequence in order to examine one particular section further. To save time, he began midway through the sequence and instead of entering the exact data, which was accurate to six decimal places, he dropped off the three last decimal places of each figure. He assumed that any change would be minimal. He ran the program fully expecting that it would replicate the first. He then wandered off to drink a coffee.
When he returned he found something quite unexpected had occurred: the result of the repeated sequence, a graph, initially looked identical to the first he had already printed, but then rapidly began to diverge; first a little, and then wildly. This rapidly escalating rate of divergence is now termed a ‘cascade to Chaos’. The very tiny, apparently insignificant, error which Dr Lorenz had introduced by dropping the final decimal places from his figures had rapidly caused a completely different result.37
Lorenz established two principles of Chaos: the first, sensitivity to initial conditions; small events can ultimately create large effects. The second, the importance of feedback from the environment. There is a constant interaction between the developing system and its surroundings, each affecting the other, backwards and forwards in an endless cycle: the system changes in a totally unpredictable way.
Chaos theorists have an eye for pattern and the patterns of chaotic systems share similarities: the same patterns seen in snowflakes are also seen in turbulent water, in heartbeat patterns, in patterns of waves breaking upon a beach. In some way nature is playing the chaos game.
In short, events which appear random turn out to have an underlying order.
The entire ecosystem within which we and all other creatures live is part of a global entity which is constantly and progressively cascading into Chaos and has done so ever since the very beginning of life. It will be seen that this idea solves the problem of the e
xistence of millions of weird and unlikely forms of animals and plants which seem impossible to account for by Darwinian natural selection. These oddities no longer have to be seen as advantageous to be selected. The development of genetic variation chaotically cascading through the millennia can account for this incredible diversity. In comparison Darwinian natural selection seems linear, mechanistic and simple-minded.
There is a further surprising point revealed by Chaos Theory: evolutionary intent.
Because of the importance of feedback, from the environment and back again, on the creation of chaotic patterns, we can see that life is not so much helplessly modified by a one-way traffic of chance effects but actively involved in creating its own future direction.
The increase in the complexity of living creatures over the aeons is in complete accord with the theory of Chaos; a system cascading away from its starting point into unpredictable complexity. But there is more: this move towards complexity, evident in evolution, indicates that it is not random. Rather, it appears to be the expression of some deeper design: ‘Evolution can be conceived as a goal-directed process insofar as it is part of a goal-directed universe, an unfolding of potentialities somehow inherent in this cosmos.’38 And, as proof of a goal-directed universe, Wesson points to the sun and planets: they have moved naturally from a ‘fireball to solar system’. This is evidence of a progression, a cycle perhaps, where inherent potential is unfolded.
Is something seeking to express itself?
An Act of Faith
Darwin’s theory was a child of its times. Victorian man had an innate feeling of superiority over the rest of the world and Darwin appeared to have given scientific sanction to this belief.
Once the later scientists had added the discoveries of genetics to the theory, they felt that it had then become unassailable. Despite this, it remains far closer to religious faith than scientific fact. It may satisfy some scientists personally, it may give meaning to their lives, but it cannot account for the data.
A war rages over the area: some experts make an almost ideological commitment to it – like Oxford’s Professor Dawkins who is the modern equivalent of a seventeenth-century fundamentalist preacher in his fervent demand for adherence to an orthodoxy.
Under pressure, not only from the creationists, science is trying to present a united front. It is as though scientists fear that to abandon Darwin is to fall into the hands of the creationists. This is nonsense and a measure of how weak many feel their scientific explanations really are.
In the end, Darwin’s theory of evolution is a myth; like all myths it seeks to satisfy the need for understanding the origin of humanity. To that extent it may work, but that does not prove it is true.
3
Could ‘Extinct’ Creatures Still Exist?
In 1972 the USS Stein, an antisubmarine frigate recently commissioned into the United States Navy, left its base in San Diego on a routine patrol which took it down the coast of South America. Shortly after it crossed the equator, its underwater tracking gear mysteriously malfunctioned and all efforts at repair failed. Forced to abandon its mission, USS Stein returned for repairs to a dry-dock at Long Beach naval base. There, the reason for the malfunction was quickly discovered. The large sonar dome protruding from beneath the ship had been savagely attacked by some massive marine creature; a creature which had left embedded in the dome hundreds of hollow, sharp teeth, up to an inch long. Specialist scientists studied the evidence and, eventually, it seemed reluctantly, conceded the obvious: that the destruction had been wrought by some ‘extremely large’ creature ‘of a species still unknown to science’.1
In the 1960s and 70s the small American submersible Alvin was used in a research programme to study the strange life existing in the extreme ocean depths, in particular that existing around the deep ocean vents. The ‘pilots’ of this versatile craft had become well used to strange creatures and sudden emergencies for each trip was operated at the edge of both knowledge and technology. But even they could be shocked.
On one dive thousands of feet below the surface, a regular pilot, ‘Mac’ McCamis, was gazing out of his observation port when, without any warning, a huge deep-sea creature slid suddenly and rapidly past and quickly vanished into the deep black gloom. Despite his experience of the seas, McCamis was left shaken. He reported seeing a ‘monster or something… at least forty or fifty foot of it’.2 Its identity continues to be a mystery.
Scientists aboard another research submersible, Deepstar 4000, saw a similar monster in the late 1960s. They were 4,000 feet from he surface planting instruments on the sea floor of the San Diego trough when a huge fish, about forty feet long, of an unknown species swam right up to them. ‘The eyes were as big as dinner plates,’ the pilot reported.3
It is true that there are monsters in the sea. It is not always necessary to invoke unknown species to account for them. Sceptics will point out that monsters are well known: the whale or the whale-shark, for example; even the Great White shark moving at speed might seem bigger and more fearsome than it already is. It is a common and confident belief that no unknown animal of any size could have escaped the increasingly sophisticated search of the sea by fishermen and naval vessels as well as by the specialist ships engaged in scientific research. But this belief is really just an excessive attack of patronizing over-confidence. Large, unknown sea-creatures have been found.
In 1976 a United States research vessel operating off the coast of Hawaii hauled up its sea anchor to find, entangled in it, a large and totally unknown shark about fifteen feet long. This shark proved to be not only a new species but – astonishing biologists – also a new family and genus. Due to its huge mouth – four feet or more wide – it was quickly dubbed the ‘Megamouth’ shark.4
Megamouth was unlike all other sharks. Its head was large and chunky in relation to its body and its mouth contained a luminescent lining and 256 rows of tiny teeth. It lived on plankton which it strained out of the water. It was a slow and shy fish, unlikely to ever pose a threat to man. Nevertheless, it is extraordinary that it should first have been seen only twenty years ago.
In 1990 a slightly larger Megamouth shark was caught alive and, to gain a better knowledge of its habits, it was released back into the ocean with two small transmitters inserted beneath its skin. These revealed that the shark daily migrated up and down in the sea following the plankton it fed on: at night it would rise to a depth of about forty feet; by day, it would descend to 500 feet or more. This is one of the reasons why it had managed to stay out of human contact for so long. By 1995 seven examples of this shark had been caught, the longest measuring seventeen feet; it is thought that larger examples might exist.
Survivors from the Fossil Record
It is probable that creatures long thought extinct, known only by examples found fossilized in the rocks, are still living deep beneath the surface.
During the unexplained disasters which killed off much of terrestrial life, more often than not life in the sea survived. This is because it is an environment which remains remarkably stable, especially in the deeper regions. It would certainly be possible for large ancient creatures to survive there and remain unknown to science – if not to those who, for millennia, have made their living from the sea. Is it surprising that these fishermen speak of creatures not yet accepted by science? That such creatures exist is hardly in doubt.
A huge and terrifying shark, the ancestor of all nightmares, is known to have prowled the oceans long ago. It grew to at least twice the size of the largest known Great White, reaching a length of fifty feet or more. Its teeth were formidable weapons, triangular daggers up to six inches long.
This monster is the Carcharodon megalodon and is thought to have become extinct a million years ago. Perhaps early man, making primitive attempts to cross the sea, was familiar with its power and his desperate fear has since reverberated down through the millennia.
Perhaps, though, the cessation of fossils has more to do with geological pr
ocesses than biological reality; perhaps megalodon did not die out. After all, there is no obvious reason why such a tough and resilient creature should survive for millions of years simply to succumb suddenly. Especially when its fellow sharks continued to flourish. The sea has not changed; why should a single species of shark?
Twice this century, in the region of the Polynesian Tuamotu Archipelago, north of Tahiti, a huge and unknown species of shark has been seen by experienced shark fishermen. It was described as being forty to fifty feet long, yellowish in colour with obvious white speckles. Its head alone measured ten feet or more across.5
A monstrous shark, ‘ghostly whitish’, was observed off the coast of New South Wales, Australia, in 1918. Frightened and subdued fishermen described how their heavily weighted crayfish pots, each three and a half feet in diameter, together with all tackle and mooring lines, were quickly and easily scooped up by an immense shark over 100 feet in length. The Australian shark expert who, together with a Fisheries Inspector, recorded this story from the fishermen themselves, accepted a measure of exaggeration in the telling but conceded that something strange and unknown had unnerved these experienced fishermen who, as he pointed out, were readily familiar with the normal species of sharks in that area. And, he noted, for several days after this attack they all refused to put to sea.6
The Polynesians, whose lives are closely intertwined with the sea, have ancient tales of a fearsome huge shark which they claim grows to 100 feet or more in length. Such is their respect for its power that they call it ‘Lord of the Deep’.7
Could this shark be megalodon? If it lived one million years ago, could it be alive in the sea’s depths today?
Ancient Traces Page 5