As scientists happily get on with their wide and varied work, I wonder what creationists (such as those who comment here) do in order to rationalise such research. How many hoops do they have to jump through in order to make this data, and all the work of these scientists do, make any sense?
Here we have a fossilized eye that is some 530 million years old, and everything about this is in direct contravention of all that creationists tell us. It beggars belief that, in this day and age, we are still having to defend the very robust work of established science and scientists at all. Of course, we only have to defend this to people who are too ignorant, or lazy, or entrenched, to accept a very obvious understanding of reality.
Here, The Independent reports: Scientists have found what they believe is the oldest eye ever discovered in a 530-million-year-old fossil.
The remains of the extinct sea creature includes the early form of an eye, which is seen in many animals that exist today, including bees and dragonflies.
An international team of researchers made the find while examining the fossil of a species called a trilobite unearthed in Estonia, according to the study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences journal.
Trilobites, hard-shelled ancestors of crabs and spiders, lived in coastal waters during the Palaeozoic era between 541-251 million years ago.
Scientists discovered the species, called Schmidtiellus reetae, had a primitive form of compound eye, an optical organ consisting of tiny visual cells called ommatidia.
“This exceptional fossil shows us how early animals saw the world around them hundreds of millions of years ago,” said Professor Euan Clarkson, of the University of Edinburgh’s School of GeoSciences who was part of the research team.
“Remarkably, it also reveals that the structure and function of compound eyes has barely changed in half a billion years.”
Continue reading…
Is it that these scientists are being so ignorant of reality that the entire framework of their job and discipline is wrong, and all of the connected disciplines are also, rather foolishly, wrong? Or is it that they know this and are simply lying in order to get funding? Or some other version of events that looks very close to conspiracy?