Bats are found throughout America, but in certain areas of the country (e.g., the southwest) bats are the reason tourists visit. They gather and watch these mammals surge into the evening sky. The bats soar from cave systems by the thousands on their nightly foray. You have probably seen bats as they fed on the wing but mistook them for birds.
The fossil record shows that bats have always been bats. “The earliest known bats appear in the fossil record…[about] 50 million years ago, and they appear suddenly and already possessing the anatomical hallmarks of powered flight.”1
The sudden appearance of fully-formed creatures, such as bats, in the fossil record is a hallmark of the creation model.2
Recently, an international team of scientists in New Zealand (St. Bathans in Central Otago) discovered the remains of a giant burrowing bat that was about three times the size of today’s average bat.3 Evolutionists dated the bones and teeth of this large bizarre creature to be 16 to 19 million years old. The fossil bat was named Vulcanops jennyworthyae. It had a distinctive diet that included spiders, insects, flowers, fruit and nectar. But its diet wasn’t unique. One researcher admitted that the giant burrowing bat had a diet much like the modern bats of South America.
This giant bat was still a bat with the ability to both fly and burrow. God created bats with all their genetic diversity just thousands of years ago. Like other creatures, they are able to move in and fill ecological niches. The giant burrowing bat is yet another example of design-based adaptation.4
References
- Sears, K. et al. 2006. Development of bat flight. Proceeding of the National Academy of Sciences. 103 (17): 6581-6586.
- For example: Thomas, B. 2008. Fossilized Gecko Fits Creation Model. Creation Science Update. Posted on ICR.org September 8, 2008, accessed January 10, 2018.
- Giant extinct burrowing bat discovered in New Zealand. Science News. Posted on ScienceDaily.com January 10, 2018, accessed January 15, 2018.
- Tomkins, J. 2016. Convergent Evolution or Design-Based Adaptation? Creation Science Update. Posted on ICR.org July 7, 2016, accessed January 10, 2018.
*Frank Sherwin is Research Associate, Senior Lecturer, and Science Writer at the Institute for Creation Research and earned his M. A. in zoology from the University of Northern Colorado.
Article posted on February 1, 2018.
