Blog

by Steve Risner

Last week we talked about whale evolution and how the fossil record shows without question that no evidence exists of any such evolution. I mentioned in the opening paragraph that whale evolution has replaced horse evolution as the “go to” for evolutionists when they wish to show that their theory has support. This was because horse evolution had been discredited and rearranged so many times, they eventually gave up on it more or less. There are two interesting things to note here: 1) whale evolution is the absolute best they've got and it's a total waste of time—there is literally nothing to show support for it if we're being open and honest about it, and 2) horse evolution is still taught in many textbooks and in many classrooms (high school and college) as evidence for evolution when many notable evolutionists have abandoned it. This is the story with a great many things in this debate. Evolution proponents teach something, sometimes prematurely, as evidence for universal common descent. Then, the “evidence” is rejected by the majority if not all evolutionists, but it's still taught for years or even decades. I was taught about Haeckel's embryo drawings, even though they were found to be fake since the mid-1800's! So there is no shortage of dishonest proceedings when it comes to evolutionary dogma being taught in schools and universities. Horse evolution is no different. Let's explore that.

First, read what a few authorities on the subject have to say. Dr. Niles Eldredge, curator at the American Museum of Natural History says concerning horse evolution, “I admit that an awful lot of that has gotten into the textbooks as though it were true. For instance, the most famous example still on exhibit downstairs (in the American Museum) is the exhibit on horse evolution prepared perhaps 50 years ago. That has been presented as literal truth in textbook after textbook. Now I think that that is lamentable...” Many have found the story of horse evolution “lamentable” but we still see it printed in textbooks like it's a fact. The level of speculation is never mentioned and that level is extremely high. And then there is Nils Heribert-Nilsson: “The family tree of the horse is beautiful and continuous only in the textbooks.” Why is it presented as evidence if it's only found in books and drawn by an artist?

The first modern version of the “family tree” of horses was developed around the 1950's, although it's been speculated about since the late-1870's. It's been heavily updated since then. The tale tells of smaller, multi-toed animals that possibly lived in forests with lots of foliage to eat, to much larger, stronger, hoofed animals that live on the plains and eat grasses. Horses display a great deal of variation (if you know what you're looking for) and this makes it difficult to categorize fossils. In fact, within vertebrates, there can be so much variation within a genus that there can be cross over with different animal groups. Like most fossil finds, remnants are rarely complete and often times are a very small portion of the total skeleton. In fact, with very little (sometimes a piece of a jaw bone and a few teeth) an entire animal will be assembled including size, how it moved, skin color, and, if they decide they want it to have hair, hair color, what it ate, how it socialized, etc. It's amazing! Let's be advised as well that the alleged ancestors have never been found near each other—meaning not on the same continent. They are only arranged together because evolutionists want them to be together. In reality, they are not at all.

One of the issues that seems rather problematic is that “earlier” horses are found in strata that also contain more “modern” horses. The first 2 “early horse” candidates (the first, Hyracotherium, was discovered by Richard Owen and named so because he believed it was a rock badger of some kind and nothing related to horses), found in the Eocene epoch—roughly 45 million years ago according to their arbitrary dates—are actually found with the third candidate for “early horses” which is said to be in the Oligocene epoch which was roughly 28 million years ago. Maybe a lot of data, but stick with me. Now, so we understand, these epochs have a range of millions of years assigned to them. The ages I've stated are the median time period. The oldest “horse” is said to be from 50 million years ago. The second is also said to be 50 million years old. Hard to accept that one evolved into the other over millions of years if they lived contemporaneously. Now, the third in the line is also, according to some, from 46 million years ago. So we went from the first to the second literally in no time and then to the third in a few million years. That's a long time to you and me, but it's a blink of an eye in the alleged deep-time scenario. And, as I stated in the opening of this paragraph, they are all found in the same rock layers. In fact, finds of the first in this lineage, Hyracotherium, have been found in rock layers allegedly 2-5 million years old! Modern horses are found in layers from nearly that same time period.

Not to beat it to death, but then we have the next two candidates being found in the same layers as the two after that. Mesohippus and Miohippus both lived about 35 million years ago (again, please keep in mind I agree with none of these dates, but the evolutionist does). Parahippus lived 20 million years ago and Merychippus supposedly lived about 15 million years ago! However, all of these have been found in similar rock layers even though they span some 20 million years. Weird, right?

One of the really cool things that evolutionists have done is rename some of these animals that are very similar (even likely the same animals with variation that can occur within a genus or even a species with different names). This helps them align them in such a way as to appear to be in a family tree, with one becoming the next, becoming the next, etc. Recall how I stated there is simply way too much variation with the vertebrates and their families or smaller groups to make such categorizing possible. But the fact I'm trying to get across here is that nearly all of these animals (if we are to believe they are all different animals) are found in rock layers with similar ages, in evolutionary time scales. None could have evolved into the other.

The tooth type of these animals as they change from leaf/foliage eaters to grass eaters has no evidence in the fossil record, either. They are either one or the other. And tooth design is very specific. It's not a simple matter to go from one type of tooth to another. They also have varying numbers of toes and ribs and are drastically different in size—going from the size of a small dog to the size of an average horse at about 1500 lbs. Keep in mind that different horses today can have different numbers of ribs AND they can have more than one toe, even! We most generally think of horses as having one toe—a hoof. This is not true of all horses. Look up “Recent Polydactyle Horses” and see what you find. It's bizarre. Dr. O.C. Marsh said, “both fore and hind feet may each have two extra digits fairly developed, and all of nearly equal size.” But there is no fossil evidence of changing ribs, changing teeth, or changing toes at all. None.

The fact that all of the alleged intermediates from “primitive” horse-like creatures to today's horse are easily questioned and nearly as easily demonstrably false but all are still taught in science texts and in universities around the globe is appalling. Less attention has been placed on the horse in recent years, but it's still out there. There is no explanation as to how any of the major differences in the alleged ancestors occurred and no explanation as to why nearly if not all of the animals in the lineage can be found in the same rock layers has been given.

Peter Hastie asks some very good questions, in my opinion: “My research has left me troubled. Why do science textbooks continue to use the horse as a prime example of evolution, when the whole schema is demonstrably false? Why do they continue to teach our kids something that is not scientific?”

How does this fit with creation? I like what Dr. Jon Sarfati has to say about this: “An important part of the biblical creation model is that different kinds of creatures were created with lots of genetic information. Natural selection can sort out this pre-existing genetic information, by eliminating creatures not suited to a particular environment. Thus many different varieties can be produced in different environments. Note that this sorting process involves a loss of information, so is irrelevant to particles-to-people evolution, which requires non-intelligent processes to add new information.”

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