Literature

One of the more notable fossil finds this year concerns a juvenile gecko lizard, less than an inch long, parts of which were preserved in amber. The researchers have studied a posterior lower limb and foot, and a partial tail. "The discovery has been announced as a new genus and species of gecko, now extinct, and has been named Cretaceogekko. It had a striped pattern that probably served as camouflage."

The tiny foot of Cretaceogekko: a Cretaceous species with modern sophistication. (Image here)

The find is remarkable on two counts. The first is that this specimen nearly doubles the reported age of the oldest known fossil gecko. The previous record was Lower Eocene, but the new find takes us back well into the Age of Dinosaurs. Today, there are about 2000 species of gecko, allocated to nearly 100 genera. There is therefore great natural variability in the group, and it is not surprising that the fossil should be assigned to a new genus. Stasis at the family level is demonstrated: the Gekkonidae have been stable over geological time. This is an observation that needs greater emphasis in education about the history of life on Earth. Evolutionists are so keen to focus on small variations that they miss the big picture, which is that stasis, rather than transformation, characterises the fossil record.

Secondly, the researchers report the presence of "sophisticated adhesive toe pads". The pads on the toes were observed to have "transverse lamellae probably bearing numerous hairlike setae found in many modern geckos".

"The tiny foot of this ancient lizard still shows the tiny "lamellae," or sticky toe hairs, that to this day give modern geckos their unusual ability to cling to surfaces or run across a ceiling. Research programs around the world have tried to mimic this bizarre adhesive capability, with limited success." [For more on recent research, go here].

A good case can be made for gecko setae being irreducibly complex as an aggregated structure. A few setae are useless - there is no significant adhesion. There is no rationale for setae to accumulate on the feet of ancestral geckos, because there is no identifiable functionality unless the assembly is a fully formed. Merely having setae is not enough either, as is clear from the difficulties of producing biomimetic products. If intelligent agency is having a hard time emulating the gecko mechanism for adhesion, it is not unreasonable to ask whether intelligent agency was involved in designing and engineering the real thing. In support of the irreducible complexity argument, it is significant that these toe pads are fully formed in the very oldest specimen known to us. We do not see any transitional structures. This creates an enormous problem for theories of gradual transformation, which must defend a step-by-step route for climbing Mount Improbable. Geckos appear fully formed, and it is the Darwinists that are found contending with the data in order to preserve their theory.

A 100 million year old gecko with sophisticated adhesive toe pads, preserved in amber from Myanmar
E. Nicholas Arnold & George Poinar
Zootaxa, 1847: 62-68 (11 Aug. 2008)

Abstract: A new genus and species of gecko is described from a posterior lower limb and foot, and a partial tail, preserved in Lower Cretaceous amber from Myanmar that is 97-110 My old. It appears to be the oldest unequivocal fossil gecko, predating fragmentary skeletal remains from the Upper Cretaceous and being 43-56 My older than Yanatarogecko from the Lower Eocene, previously the oldest known gecko preserved in amber. It also provides firm evidence that gekkotans and possibly gekkonids were in Asia at this time. The Myanmar specimen shows, that the distinctive foot proportions and sophisticated adhesive mechanism, involving pads on the toes with transverse lamellae probably bearing numerous hairlike setae found in many modern geckos, had already evolved around 100My ago. The specimen is very small, even compared with juveniles of the smallest living geckos. However, the high numbers of lamellae on its toe pads suggest it is from a juvenile of a species with relatively large adult body size.

See also:

Oldest Gecko Fossil Ever Found, Entombed In Amber, ScienceDaily (Sep. 3, 2008)

Tyler, D. Gecko feet set the standard for adhesion, ARN Literature Blog (25 July 2007)