About horses, creations, or an evolved rock badger?
They say about horses that probably no other animal has played such an important role in human history as the horse. Before the invention of steam and gasoline engines, horses were the fastest means of transportation on land. The use of horses by messengers and soldiers at one time decided the outcome of many historical events. Horses are used in many areas. Some peoples drink mare's milk; horsehair is used to make violin strings, mattresses, and clothing upholstery.
Horses are known to have a life-saving tetanus antitoxin from the immune system, and their manure is used to fertilize the soil, and sometimes even as fuel. Horse hide is used to make high-quality Cordoba colored tanned leather, and boiled horse bones and cartilage are often used to make glue. Finally, many people enjoy horseback riding, and they enjoy it.
About horses, the infamous depiction of "horse evolution"
Unfortunately, over the past century, this wonderful animal has come to be used for a very unsuitable purpose. Its alleged origin has come to be considered one of the main "proofs" of evolution. It all began in 1879 with the American paleontologist O. K. Marsh and the famous evolutionist T. G. Huxley, known as the "Darwin Bulldog". Since then, many museums and popular textbooks have shown clever portrayals of successively evolved species. The sequence begins with a small, four-toed "primitive horse" or "Eogippus," believed to have lived 50 million years ago. The next creature in this sequence is the larger animal Mesohyppus, with three fingers.
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On the next step is an even larger animal, Merigippus, which had two toes smaller than the third. And finally, this sequence is completed by a large modern Horse (Equus) with only one finger, and all that remained of the other two fingers became known as "rudimentary" fibula.3 Some diagrams also depict a gradual change in the structure of the teeth, which become larger over time. gypsodont (strongly convex teeth). This entire sequence presumably shows how the horse's diet has changed: from plucking shoots on bushes to plucking grass.
About horses, is everything completely clear?
As biologist Geribert-Nilsson noted, "The horse family tree looks beautiful and continuous only in textbooks," and renowned paleontologist Niles Eldridge called the image in textbooks a "gruesome" and "classic case of paleontological museology." As shown in Walter Barngart's detailed dissertation, depicting horse evolution, the "sequence" is merely an interpretation of the data.
In his work, he describes how different evolutionists drew different evolutionary sequences based on the same data - in fact, this is how the concept of evolution itself "evolved". This is especially true of the horse model, built on the basis of fossil skeletons, which usually lack a lot of bones. Evolutionist Gerald Kerkut wrote:
Knowledgeable evolutionists now understand that the whole picture is not clear at all, even when viewed from the perspective of their own belief system. While they still believe in horse evolution, the modern look at the animal's fossil record is more exciting and confusing.
About horses, what is a "primitive horse"?
This creature was discovered in 1841 by Richard Owen, the leading paleontologist of the time. This is the man who coined the term "dinosaurs" and he was an ardent opponent of Darwin. Owen saw no connection between the found creature and the horse. In his opinion, this animal was very similar to the modern hyrax known as the "rock badger" or "rocky hyrax". The scientist named it Hyracotherium. Later, when more evolutionarily minded paleontologists discovered other fossils of this animal, they named it "Eogippus" or "primitive horse". However, the name given by the discoverer carries more weight. Thus, as Kerkur noted, "It remains unclear whether Hyracotherium was an ancestor horse."
About horses, fossils
The fossil does not say how old they are. Their age, as a rule, is attributed to them, depending on the depth at which they occur. Fossils found in the deepest layers are usually considered the oldest. Based on biblical history, we assume that most of the fossils were buried during the Flood, and therefore the oldest fossil is actually no more than 4,500 years old. The overlying fossils may have been deposited during local catastrophes following the Flood.
Many horse fossils appear to have been deposited after the Flood. However, even if evolutionary dating is to be believed, the fossils do not show as clear a gradual development as portrayed in textbooks. For example, in northeastern Oregon, the three-toed Neohypparion and the one-toed Pliohippus were found in the same sedimentary layer. This indicates their existence at the same time, and, therefore, does not in any way prove that one evolved from the other.
About horses, many different horses
The size range of modern horses is quite wide. Their height is usually measured in the palms of the hands. One palm = 10 centimeters. The largest horse is the English Shire breed, reaching a height of 20 palms. The size of the pony is no more than 14.2 feet, and the height of a completely adult miniature Falabella is only four palms.
These animals differ not only in size. Modern horses may have 17, 18 or 19 pairs of ribs. In addition, three-toed horses are known today. At one time, O. K. Marsh noted that some horses in the American Southwest have three toes of nearly the same size, “that is, like the extinct Protohippus."
The famous Clydesdale breed of draft horses, one of the largest of its kind, next to the dwarf horse. Despite the noticeable difference in size, both are completely horses.
An important part of the biblical creation model is that different types of animals were created with a wealth of genetic information. Natural selection can work with pre-existing genetic information, removing animals that do not meet certain environmental conditions. Thus, different environmental conditions can produce many varieties of animals. Note that this sorting process is accompanied by a loss of information, and therefore, is irrelevant to microbe-to-human evolution, which requires non-sentient processes to add new information.
Moreover, a significant amount of this (created) genetic information could be in the created species in a latent state (i.e., be hidden, in other words, encoded characteristics that have not yet manifested in the offspring). These species also contained control or regulatory genes that “turn on” and “turn off” other genes. That is, these genes decide whether the information will be decoded and whether the trait will appear in the body. This would lead to very rapid and "unstable" changes, which are still changes in information that has already been created, and not new.
Applying these principles to horses, the genetic information coding for extra toes is present, but in most modern horses it is "off." Sometimes a horse is born today in which these genes are "turned on," and in many fossil horses these genes were also turned on. This explains the fact that there are no transitional forms, the size of the fingers of which would gradually decrease.
It is possible that body size and tooth shape were also under the control of regulatory genes. This is supported by data from an experiment conducted by Paul Sharp and his colleagues with mouse embryos. The researchers found that the BMP-4 protein inhibits the gene that controls the formation of molars (posterior chewing teeth) and instead grows anterior teeth (incisors). Those. if this protein is absent, the incisors do not grow.
These mechanisms help explain the alleged sequential evolutionary development of horses as genetic variation within the equine created species. This is borne out by the number of modern horse varieties, which undoubtedly belong to the same created species.
About horses, teeth shape
Different horses, of course, have different tooth shapes. Therefore, it is wrong to assume that different fossil teeth are a sign of evolution. It is also wrong to draw conclusions about diet based on the shape of the teeth. We have already shown this with bats, and the data obtained from studies of the shape of teeth completely changed the previous understanding of the type of nutrition of ancient horses. Evolutionary paleontologist Bruce McFadden studied the teeth of six equine "species" (most likely varieties within a single created genus), "dated" five million years ago.
Previous evolutionary theories would have argued that because of their highly crowned (i.e., convex) teeth, all of these species must have been grazing animals. But the number of stable isotopes of carbon 12 C and 13 C, which were impregnated with fossil teeth, indicates that these animals ate shoots, and did not nibble the grass.
According to the researchers, as soon as hypsodontics evolved (the condition of teeth when they lose roots with a high crown, which gives them the opportunity to grow all their life - occurs in species that consume mainly herbaceous food), animals could not reappear teeth with a low crown. According to the Creation model, hypsodontics is a highly specialized condition in which there is a loss of information about other types of teeth.
Again, the loss of this information completely contradicts the evolution from molecule to man, as in the long-haired bears in the schema of ref. 15.
About horses, fibula: useless leftovers or great design?
Many evolutionists have argued that the horse's fibula (see picture on the right) are vestigial; useless remnants of their asserted evolutionary past. However, as the evolutionary zoologist Scadding noted, "vestigial organs do not prove evolutionary theory in any way."
He draws attention to the anti-scientific nature of this argument. In principle, it is impossible to prove that an organ does not have a function, most likely it could have a function that we do not know about. Scadding also reminds us that "as our knowledge has increased, the list of rudimentary structures has diminished." He shows that the hundreds of similar organs claimed by 19th century scientists have been reduced to a few dubious cases. In addition, vestigial organs can, at best, prove degeneration (i.e. loss of information) rather than evolution.
In particular, the horse's fibula serve several important functions. They make the bones of the leg and foot stronger, which is very important for a horse that is galloping. These bones are also anchorage points for important muscles. And, finally, they form a protective notch, in which the supporting ligaments are located - the necessary elastic plate that redistributes the horse's body weight during its movement.
About horses, the horse shows that similarities are a consequence of Creation
According to evolutionists, the similarities in the limb structure of frogs, reptiles, and mammals prove their evolution from a common ancestor. Amphibians (e.g. frogs) were thought to be the ancestors of reptiles, which in turn gave rise to mammals, including bats and humans - hence the similarities in the structures of their limbs. However, the structure of the horse's leg does not fit well with this "explanation."
The horse, in fact, looks more like a person than a frog, however, in its structure, the limb of a frog is more like a limb of a person. Evolutionists tell a story that "explains" this discrepancy: the limbs of a horse are different from those of humans because its legs have adapted to a completely different type of movement. But this is more like telling fairy tales, not science.
The horse is part of the world created by God in order to tell us about the existence of one Creator (hence the similarities in living organisms), and that everything that exists did not appear on its own (hence the inexplicable features that do not fit into the story called “everything appeared by itself ).
Moreover, in a frog embryo, limbs do not develop in the same way as in a human embryo - the fingers of amphibians are extended outward as a result of the growth of tubercles, and in amniotes (reptiles, birds and mammals) the fingers are formed as parts of the bone plate. Yes, they have a similar structure, but this only indicates the skillful hand of a common Master, and not an accidental formation. So those who don't believe it are really unrequited (Romans 1:20).
About horses, conclusion
The textbooks build their "evolutionary sequences" based on the alleged "non-horse" (Hyracotherium) and the varieties of real horses.
This is not an example of evolution at all, but an example of great variability within the created race.
- Microbe-to-human evolution requires new information to be generated, but horse varieties, especially those with different numbers of toes, are the result of pre-existing information (either on or off) and the removal of this information by natural selection.
- Recent isotopic analyzes have proven the groundlessness of theories of adaptations to different types of nutrition based on the shape of the teeth.
- The "fibula" are not at all useless rudimentary organs of evolution, but important building blocks of the horse's leg.
Jonathan Sarfati