At first, this blog post by Ken Ham (ol’ Hambo) — the ayatollah of Appalachia, the world’s holiest man who knows more about religion and science than everyone else — doesn’t seem all that remarkable. But wait until we contrast it with reality.
Hambo’s latest is titled “100-Million-Year-Old” Spider with Long Tail Discovered. Note the scare quotes around “100 Million-Year Old.” The spider was found in Myanmar, formerly known as Burma. Here are some excerpts, with bold font added by us for emphasis:
There seems to be no end to the variety of amazing creatures being discovered preserved in amber. …. And now researchers have found a beautifully preserved spider with a tail longer than its body.
Apparently the new species “looks just like a spider, with common body parts including fangs and four [pairs of] legs that are specifically used for walking.” The spider also had spinnerets so it could produce silk. But, unlike living spiders, this one had a “tail” that was longer than its body. Researchers believe this spider could have used this “tail” as an antenna for sensing its environment, as other extant creatures use such structures today.
Not very amusing yet, but be patient. Then he says:
This spider was assigned an age of 100 million years, yet, interestingly, one researcher thinks there’s a chance they may not be extinct since the rainforest biome in southeast Asia, where they would be found (based on where they found this amber), isn’t a very well-studied area and the spider is very small. So they have no problem believing the same basic spider could have survived a supposed 100 million years without evolving!
Gasp — 100 million years without evolving! Here’s his last paragraph about the spider:
Of course, this spider wasn’t preserved 100 million years ago. It was trapped in amber and then buried during the global Flood of Noah’s day about 4,350 years ago. So if it was discovered scuttling around the forest floor by researchers, it would not be very surprising.
Yes, of course — it was the Flood. Typical creationist stuff. But now we get to the part we find funnier than what Hambo wrote — it’s what he left out.
PhysOrg has an article on this spider: Remarkable spider with a tail found preserved in amber after 100 million years. Here’s what they tell us — some of which Hambo didn’t mention — with a bit of bold font added by us:
The new animal resembles a spider in having fangs, male pedipalps, four walking legs and silk-producing spinnerets at its rear. However, it also bears a long flagellum or tail. No living spider has a tail, although some relatives of spiders, the vinegaroons, do have an anal flagellum.
This exciting new find confirms a prediction made a few years ago by Selden [Paul Selden of the Paleontological Institute and Department of Geology at the University of Kansas] and colleagues when they described a similar tailed arachnid, which resembled a spider but lacked spinnerets. These animals, from the much older Devonian (about 380 million years ago) and Permian (about 290 million years ago) periods, formed the basis of a new arachnid order, the Uraraneida, which lies along the line to modern spiders.
Ah, the new find confirms a prediction. Somehow, Hambo didn’t bother to mention that. PhysOrg continues:
“The ones we recognized previously were different in that they had a tail but don’t have the spinnerets,” said Selden. “That’s why the new one is really interesting, apart from the fact that it’s much younger — it seems to be an intermediate form. In our analysis, it comes out sort of in between the older one that hadn’t developed the spinneret and modern spider that has lost the tail.”
That’s enough to make our point. The spider in amber is a predicted intermediate species, a link between something far older and modern spiders. It’s yet another bit of evidence that confirms the theory of evolution. But ol’ Hambo didn’t want to trouble his readers by telling them any of that. The poor empty-headed drooling dears are much happier being told that this is evidence of the Flood.
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