> the fossil record of plants and those of mammals have two
>different histories in the standard global flood scenarios.
It's refreshing to see reference to plants (which are often overlooked);
plant fossils offer a very interesting view of earth history, revealing
past climates that were relatively mild most places in the world, even at
high latitudes, then from the middle Tertiary on, drying conditions, as
well as greater climatic extremes especially latitudinally, which have
produced the present biogeography This might seem quite compatible with a
global flood scenario.
What are the oldest living species? With a dramatic change from
pre-Tertiary to present conditions, only the most adaptable plants and
animals would be expected to survive and subsequently diversify where they
were able to adapt to the new and changing conditions. Others would become
extinct. I would not expect many to remain the same at the species level.
It might be hard to answer "What is the oldest living species?" (especially
since paleobotanists often give different names to similar forms found in
widely different strata, because it is "unevolutionary" to keep the same
name through long stratigraphic spans.)
With this in mind, it's remarkable that many types of plants found as
Mesozoic fossils are extant, at the family and genus level -- including not
only the famous living fossil Ginkgo biloba (which has apparently survived
even at the species level), but also Lycopods, Selaginellas, Isoetes, many
ferns including (pardon the abbreviations) Marats, Osmunds, Gleichs,
Matons, Dipters, Polypods, Dicksons, Schizs, Cyaths, and also gymnosperms
such as Cycads, Podocarps, Araucarias, Sequoias, etc, as well as
angiospems including Platanus (Sycamore), Palms, Magnolias, and many others
preserved in Cretaceous deposits.
Numerous taxa found in pre-Tertiary deposits are of course extinct. But
the presence of so many "living fossils" among the plants indicates that
environments in parts of the past world were apparently somewhat comparable
to today's, that the plant types which did survive were generously equipped
for adaptatability, and that the plants of today clearly have their "roots"
in the past, before the Tertiary climatic change -- in either an
evolutionary or creation/flood scenario.
Karen Jensen
(PhD Biology)