There’s nothing more fascinating in the evening sky than the erratic flight of what looks like a bird but is actually a ravenous, feeding bat. Using their amazing sonar,1 they effortlessly capture their fill of insects in the dark.
The evolutionary explanation for bat origins is nonexistent. The fossil record contains no fossils documenting a non-bat ancestor becoming a bat. Paleontologists find only complete and fully-formed bats in the sedimentary rocks.2
Sacha Pare writing in Live Science describes the discovery of two new fossil bats in the Green River Formation in Wyoming.
To determine the evolutionary history, or phylogeny of the bats, the researchers compared the new fossils with intact skeletons from six Eocene [claimed to be about 54 to 33 million years ago] bat species, as well as with isolated teeth from two other extinct species and with skeletons of living bats. Their results indicated that the newly discovered bat skeletons belong to a never-before-seen species of Icaronycteris...3
Regardless, these are all bats, whether a new species, extinct species, or living species. The evolutionary ancestors of these marvelous flying mammals are not known.
Evolutionists previously posited bats originated “50 million years ago.”4 But this latest discovery has moved bat origins back two million years to 52 million years ago. Pare went on to say this new “discovery has sparked a reshuffle in the bat family tree.”3 But incomplete evolutionary trees are infamous for their subjectivity and unreliability.5
Many creationists see the Green River Formation as being deposited by the Genesis Flood. It is 2,000 feet thick and spread across 20,000 square miles of southwestern Wyoming.6 Its numerous, thin layers, sometimes called varves (alleged “annual” sedimentary deposits), that the formation is famous for contain these bat fossils and a whole lot more, including horses, crocodiles, birds, and millions of fossil fish. The complete fossils within these layers point to a rapid depositional process best explained by the global Flood. And these strata can just as easily be interpreted as being thousands of years old. Indeed, fossils have been found in the Green River Formation that have original soft tissue preserved, indicating they are not millions of years old.7
The late president of ICR, geologist Dr. John Morris, stated,
The real question is, does each varve unequivocally represent one year? Definitely not, for several reasons. Studies have shown that varve counts vary between individual locations in modern glacial lakes. Sometimes, the number of laminae covering a historically dated level was more than the elapsed years....“All” researchers now recognize that sometime more than one varve can form in a single year.8
Paleontologist Tim Rietbergen of the Naturalis Biodiversity Center in Leiden, Netherlands, stated in regard to the Green River Formation, “Because they [the two newfound bat species] are found lower in the stratigraphy [sediment layers] compared to other fossil bats, they represent the oldest skeletons.”3 This isn’t a particularly scientific explanation as to why these would be the oldest skeletons. Even evolutionists would agree that a series of local flood events could bury the bats, and they could very possibly be the same age as those bats buried above them.
To conclude, the “two stunningly preserved, 52 million-year-old bat skeletons”3 found in the Green River sediments are 100% bats. They appear in the rock record fully formed and functional, with no ancestors below. They were rapidly entombed in the thinly layered but thick Green River deposits during the devastating Genesis Flood. Geologist Dr. Morris stated,
...numerous examples of catastrophic deposits, hurricane debris, 90 mph mudflows at Mount St. Helens, and laboratory experiments, have documented rapid formation of multitudes of “varves.” A detailed understanding of past, unobserved events is hard to construct, but in general, the Green River varved deposits support the global Flood of Noah’s day model much better than the uniformitarian, long age model.8
No suggestion of evolutionary change in bats (or any other creature), or deep time, can be found in Genesis.
References
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Frank Sherwin, “Bat Echolocation Defies Evolutionary Explanations,” Creation Science Update, January 21, 2022, https://www.icr.org/article/bat-echoloca
tion-defies-evolution. -
Frank Sherwin, “Bats Have Always Been Bats,” Creation Science Update, April 20, 2020, https://www.icr.org/article/bats-have-al
ways-been-bats. -
Sacha Pare, “52 Million-Year-Old Bat Skeleton Is the Oldest Ever Found and Belongs to a Never-Before-Seen Species,” Live Science, April 12, 2023, https://www.livescience.com/animals/bats
/52-million-year-old-bat-skeleton-is-the
-oldest-ever-found-and-belongs-to-a-neve
r-before-seen-species. -
Frank Sherwin, “An ‘Early’ Origin for Modern Echolocation in Bats,” Creation Science Update, November 16, 2023, https://www.icr.org/article/modern-echol
ocation-bats. - Jeffry Tomkins and Jerry Bergman, “Incomplete Lineage Sorting and Other ‘Rogue’ Data Fell the Tree of Life,” Journal of Creation 27, no. 3 (2013): 84–92.
- Tim Clarey, “Fossil Butte National Monument: Spectacular Flood Graveyard,” Acts & Facts, January/February 2024, 8–11.
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Brian Thomas, “Green River Formation Fossil Has Original Soft Tissue,” Creation Science Update, May 12, 2011, https://www.icr.org/article/6085/; Frank Sherwin, “‘Ancient’ Katydid Fossil is...a Katydid,” Creation Science Update, July 10, 2023, https://www.icr.org/article/katydid-foss
il. - John Morris, “Do Millions of Laminae in the Green River Shales Document Millions of Years?” Acts & Facts, January 2003.
Stage image: A bat sanctuary
Stage image credit: Copyright © Ranieljosecastaneda. Used in accordance with federal copyright (fair use doctrine) law. Usage by ICR does not imply endorsement of copyright holder.
* Dr. Sherwin is a science news writer at the Institute for Creation Research. He earned an M.A. in invertebrate zoology from the University of Northern Colorado and received an honorary doctorate of science from Pensacola Christian College.
