Science Literature

Digital codes can be protected against failure. A variety of options have been explored by computer programmers because it is important to catch malfunctions early and alert the user to a problem.

"In digital codes, the bits are usually packed into sets of eight bits called bytes. Normally, seven bits are used to record information and one bit - called the 'parity bit' - is used for mutation protection, usually denoted as error protection. The seven-bit string 1000001, for example, codes the letter A and 0110011 codes the number 3. If the number of 1's in the seven-bit string is even, the parity bit is given the value 1, else the value 0. If one of the seven information bits changes, for instance, by radiation, heat, or mechanical influences, they no longer correspond with the parity bit value; this is detected, an error message is generated, and the program stops, is aborted, or a switch is made towards a back-up."

The word that comes most readily to mind when considering DNA repair mechanisms is sophisticated (source here)

DNA codes are far more sophisticated than their human counterparts, and they also have a variety of repair mechanisms. A recent report of a microbe's "extraordinary maintenance and repair system" drew attention to the striking similarities between the DNA repair systems of bacteria and humans.

"Like council crews repairing damaged roads these DNA repair mechanisms employ individuals with different specialities: sometimes all that is needed is a small patch on the DNA, like filling in a pothole, other times large sections of the DNA need to be removed entirely and replaced. The repair systems need molecular machines that can detect the DNA damage in the first place, machines that can cut away the damaged DNA, and machines that can finish the repair by building new undamaged DNA. All of these molecular machines must work together in an organised fashion to carry out these very intricate repairs, and so they also require machines that take the part of foreman and co-ordinate the work of the others. When DNA is heavily damaged, cells from humans to bacteria ensure the sections that are being read at that moment (in a process called transcription) are repaired before sections that aren't being read. (Source here)"

In a new paper, William DeJong and Hans Degens discuss the implications of DNA repair mechanisms for evolutionary theory. They accompany the discussion with a simulation of a population of digital amoebae experiencing mutation and repair.

"To illustrate the difference between random change of digital and nucleotide codes within the boundaries of mutation protection and unbounded random change, we present a computer simulation of the evolutionary dynamics of a population of digital amoebae."

The findings are of considerable interest. They show that any evolutionary theory which ignores mutation protection is missing out a factor of great importance. The consequence of protection is that limitations of the evolutionary dynamics of digital and nucleotide codes are highly probable.

"Our mutation protection perspective advances the understanding of the evolutionary dynamics of both digital and nucleotide codes. It reveals that random change of digital codes is limited to the variation, recombination, and selection of predefined parameters, operators, or program modules, as a consequence of the normal mutation protection of digital codes that is present at the bit-level and the higher levels of a digital code."

They identify an ambiguity between 'mutational robustness' - that is the persistence of an organismal trait under genetic perturbations - and evolvability. The mutational robustness characteristic is often given the name 'microevolution' whereas evolvability is known as 'macroevolution'. These terms have received attention in the literature of evolutionary biology, but DeYong and Degens have brought the distinction to prominence by showing that only 'mutational robustness' scenarios are consistent with repair mechanisms.

"Unbounded random change of nucleotide codes through the accumulation of irreparable, advantageous, code-expanding, inheritable mutations at the level of individual nucleotides, as proposed by evolutionary theory, requires the mutation protection at the level of the individual nucleotides and at the higher levels of the code to be switched off or at least to dysfunction. Dysfunctioning mutation protection, however, is the origin of cancer and hereditary diseases, which reduce the capacity to live and to reproduce. Our mutation protection perspective of the evolutionary dynamics of digital and nucleotide codes thus reveals the presence of a paradox in evolutionary theory between the necessity and the disadvantage of dysfunctioning mutation protection. This mutation protection paradox, which is closely related with the paradox between evolvability and mutational robustness, needs further investigation."

A video presentation of the article can be found here. The authors have made a significant contribution to thinking about origins. The novelty of the argument is the way they have used simulation to illustrate cogent differences between evolvability and mutational robustness, something that appears to have been lacking in other models of evolutionary processes. Simulation depends, of course, on the validity of the underlying logic and associated parameters. Without the link with the empirical world, simulation models are just games to entertain. The paper shows that all the empirical evidences for evolutionary processes (Darwin's finches, lizard legs, etc) fit into the mutational robustness type of change. We do not have empirical data for evolvability. This is why Darwinists insist that the present is the key to the past and that the small scale changes can be extrapolated to produce novel life forms. The DNA repair argument needs to be answered before they can be allowed to continue with such wishful thinking.

A note to educators and policy makers: is this information that students should consider in their education? Should the Darwinists have the freedom to promote their dogmas without being challenged?

The Evolutionary Dynamics of Digital and Nucleotide Codes: A Mutation Protection Perspective
William DeJong and Hans Degens
Open Evolution Journal, February 2011, 5(1), 1-4 | DOI: 10.2174/1874404401105010001

Abstract: Both digital codes in computers and nucleotide codes in cells are protected against mutations. Here we explore how mutation protection affects the random change and selection of digital and nucleotide codes. We illustrate our findings with a computer simulation of the evolution of a population of self replicating digital amoebae. We show that evolutionary programming of digital codes is a valid model for the evolution of nucleotide codes by random change within the boundaries of mutation protection, not for evolution by unbounded random change. Our mutation protection perspective enhances the understanding of the evolutionary dynamics of digital and nucleotide codes and its limitations, and reveals a paradox between the necessity of dysfunctioning mutation protection for evolution and its disadvantage for survival. Our mutation protection perspective suggests new directions for research into mutational robustness.

See also:

Contradiction in evolutionary theory [video], by INIResearch (19 Apr 2011)

The golden orb-weaver spider features in newly reported research and provides an exciting insight into past ecosystems. Today, these animals adorn tropical rainforests, with giant females of Nephila maculate (legs spanning up to 20 cm), and small males (just a few centimetres across). However, the fossil record of the Nephilidae family is meagre. The earliest example of the genus Nephila comes from the Eocene (considered to be about 34 Ma) and the earliest example of the family Nephilidae is a male from the Cretaceous (considered to be 130 Ma). The newly reported fossil golden orb-weaver spider is a giant female with a leg span of about 15 cm.

"Here, we report the largest known fossil spider, Nephila jurassica sp. nov., from Middle Jurassic (approx. 165 Ma) strata of Daohugou, Inner Mongolia, China. The new species extends the fossil record of the family by approximately 35 Ma and of the genus Nephila by approximately 130 Ma, making it the longest ranging spider genus known."

Nephila jurassica (Credit: Royal Society Biology Letters, P. Selden et al. Source here)

Since all known male fossil nephilids are of normal small size, the large size of the female indicates that sexual dimorphism characterised the Middle Jurassic population (although, as the authors say, confirmation of this awaits the discovery of a male). Of particular interest are some of the fine details preserved in the tuffaceous sedimentary source rock. These include the pedipalps, spinnerets, setal brushes and trichobothria.

"You see not just the hairs on the legs but little things like the trichobothria which are very, very fine. They're used to detect air vibrations. There's a very distinct group of them and they're a very distinct size which is typical of this genus, Nephila," Professor Selden explained.

So this particular living fossil exhibits stasis at the genus level and raises again the issue of what can be learned from the phenomenon of stasis. A previous blog expressed some frustration at Neodarwinian evolutionists who file stasis in a box that says: no environmental change, no selection pressures, no evolution. The problem with this is that so many potentially interesting questions are never asked - and the result is an impoverished science. However, there are evolutionary biologists who think differently, and it is worth considering what an alternative perspective on stasis might look like.

For over a decade, Eric Davidson has been championing the concept of developmental gene regulatory networks (dGRNs) which control ontogeny of the body plan. More than most biologists, he is aware of the significance of different paradigms and how they affect the way we approach the phenomenon of stasis since the Cambrian Explosion. He introduces his latest paper in this way:

"Never in the modern history of evolutionary bioscience have such essentially different ideas about how to understand evolution of the animal body plan been simultaneously current. Of the many different aspects of evolution, we are here to be concerned with how the developmental mechanisms generating the body plan architectures recognized in Linnaen systematics at the level of phylum and class evolve, and how these mechanisms have been maintained, often since the Cambrian or Ordovician. Ideas about the nature of the underlying evolutionary mechanisms, and what to do to study them, generally associate with one of several paradigmatic views."

Davidson considers that the neo-Darwinian paradigm has failed to deliver on its promises and has pursued unjustified assumptions that are in tension with the real world.

"[I]ts fundamental concepts are largely irrelevant to the process by which the body plan is formed in ontogeny. In addition it gives rise to lethal errors in respect to evolutionary process. Neo-Darwinian evolution is uniformitarian in that it assumes that all process works the same way, so that evolution of enzymes or flower colors can be used as current proxies for study of evolution of the body plan. It erroneously assumes that change in protein coding sequence is the basic cause of change in developmental program; and it erroneously assumes that evolutionary change in body plan morphology occurs by a continuous process. All of these assumptions are basically counterfactual."

The phenomenon of stasis is not a quirk of history (i.e. no drivers for transformation) but rather, it requires a genetic explanation. For that, we need to look beyond neoDarwinism to develop a regulatory systems biology.

"The answers lie in the architecture of dGRNs and the developmental logic they generate at the system level, far from micro-evolutionary mechanism. While adaptive evolutionary variation occurs constantly in modern animals at the periphery of dGRNs, the stability over geological epochs of the developmental properties that define the major attributes of their body plans requires special explanations rooted deep in the structure/function relations of dGRNs."

More, of course, needs to be said. The point I am making here is that if stasis is data, we need to take body plans seriously, and also those distinctives associated with Class, Order and Family levels of taxonomy. Some scholars approach these issues open to the thought that body plans really are planned and that intelligent design is the underpinning concept providing integration and coherence. Others do not advocate intelligent design, but are nevertheless committed to working with body plans, developmental logic and regulatory systems. Regarding the science, there is common ground. More comment on Davidson's paper will appear in a future blog.

A golden orb-weaver spider (Araneae: Nephilidae: Nephila) from the Middle Jurassic of China
Paul A. Selden, ChungKun Shih and Dong Ren
Biology Letters, October 23 2011, 7:775-778 | doi:10.1098/rsbl.2011.0228 [Open access]

Abstract: Nephila are large, conspicuous weavers of orb webs composed of golden silk, in tropical and subtropical regions. Nephilids have a sparse fossil record, the oldest described hitherto being Cretaraneus vilaltae from the Cretaceous of Spain. Five species from Neogene Dominican amber and one from the Eocene of Florissant, CO, USA, have been referred to the extant genus Nephila. Here, we report the largest known fossil spider, Nephila jurassica sp. nov., from Middle Jurassic (approx. 165 Ma) strata of Daohugou, Inner Mongolia, China. The new species extends the fossil record of the family by approximately 35 Ma and of the genus Nephila by approximately 130 Ma, making it the longest ranging spider genus known. Nephilidae originated somewhere on Pangaea, possibly the North China block, followed by dispersal almost worldwide before the break-up of the supercontinent later in the Mesozoic. The find suggests that the palaeoclimate was warm and humid at this time. This giant fossil orb-weaver provides evidence of predation on medium to large insects, well known from the Daohugou beds, and would have played an important role in the evolution of these insects.

Evolutionary bioscience as regulatory systems biology
Eric H. Davidson
Developmental Biology, 2011, in press | doi:10.1016/j.ydbio.2011.02.004

Abstract: At present several entirely different explanatory approaches compete to illuminate the mechanisms by which animal body plans have evolved. Their respective relevance is briefly considered here in the light of modern knowledge of genomes and the regulatory processes by which development is controlled. Just as development is a system property of the regulatory genome, causal explanation of evolutionary change in developmental process must be considered at a system level. Here I enumerate some mechanistic consequences that follow from the conclusion that evolution of the body plan has occurred by alteration of the structure of developmental gene regulatory networks. The hierarchy and multiple additional design features of these networks act to produce Boolean regulatory state specification functions at upstream phases of development of the body plan. These are created by the logic outputs of network subcircuits, and in modern animals these outputs are impervious to continuous adaptive variation unlike genes operating more peripherally in the network.

See also:

Fossilised spider 'biggest on record' By Jonathan Amos, BBC News (20 April 2011)

A few years ago, a new fossil cricket species was discovered and named. This year, after the discovery of a second fossil, the specimen was renamed and assigned to the extant genus Schizodactylus of the family Schizodactylidae. It should be noted that no other fossils of this modern family are known.

"Schizodactylidae, or splay-footed crickets, are an unusual group of large, fearsome-looking predatory insects related to the true crickets, katydids and grasshoppers, in the order Orthoptera," said University of Illinois entomologist and lead author Sam Heads, of the Illinois Natural History Survey. "They get their common name from the large, paddle-like projections on their feet, which help support their large bodies as they move around their sandy habitats, hunting down prey."

The new fossil (source here)

We should remind ourselves that the details of classifying genera and species is a matter of human judgment, but the tendency is to consider all differences as significant. There was enough in common to assign the fossil to an extant genus, but it was given a distinct species name.

"The Schizodactylus specimen had features that were different enough from other members of the genus to warrant its own species (Schizodactylus groeningae). For instance, its legs and the lobe-shaped structures on its feet had slightly different shapes than species living today. Even so, its general features differ very little, Heads said, revealing that the genus has been in a period of "evolutionary stasis" for at least the last 100 million years. "It's obviously doing something right," Heads said of the new species and its body plan."

It is of interest to note how living fossils are described. Sometimes, they are "some of evolution's greatest survivors", and the splay-footed cricket is "obviously doing something right". The Economist reporter says that the insect illustrates the "first rule of natural selection": "If it ain't broke, don't fix it." LiveScience took a different view, making the point that the animal has been "stuck in time for the past 100 million years or so". Evolutionary theory wins all ways: if the animals document stasis, then they are fit for their environment and the environment has not changed with time. If they document change, then natural selection is at work, acting on natural variations. Images of the modern cricket are here and here.

The problem with evolutionary theory today is that it finds nothing significant to learn from these examples of stasis. "If it ain't broke, don't fix it" seems to exhaust their mental powers. However, there are a host of issues waiting to be explored: What do these organisms tell us about limits to variation? What can be learned about biological innovation? Can microevolution be extrapolated to macroevolution? Is it realistic to expect environments to show the same stasis as these animals and plants? Living fossils are not just quirky - they are telling us something significant about the biological world. For more, go here.

On the placement of the Cretaceous orthopteran Brauckmannia groeningae from Brazil, with notes on the relationships of Schizodactylidae (Orthoptera, Ensifera)
Sam W. Heads, Lea Leuzinger
ZooKeys, 2011, 77, 17-30 | doi: 10.3897/zookeys.77.769

Abstract: The fossil orthopteran Brauckmannia groeningae Martins-Neto (Orthoptera, Ensifera) from the Early Cretaceous Crato Formation of Brazil, currently misplaced at both the genus and family level, is transferred to the family Schizodactylidae and assigned to the extant genus Schizodactylus Brulle; ergo, Brauckmannia enters synonymy under Schizodactylus and Brauckmanniidae enters synonymy under Schizodactylidae. Schizodactylus groeningae (Martins-Neto), comb. n. agrees in size and general habitus with extant members of the genus, but can be readily separated by the robust, subovoid form of the metatibiae and the distinctive morphology of the lateral metabasitarsal processes. This species represents the first fossil occurrence of Schizodactylidae and the only New World record of this ancient lineage. Phylogenetic relationships of the schizodactylids are reviewed and a sister-group relationship with Grylloidea advocated based on a reappraisal of morphological and molecular evidence.

See also:

Rare Insect Fossil Reveals 100 Million Years of Evolutionary Stasis, ScienceDaily (Feb. 4, 2011)

After trilobites, the most characteristic fossils of the Palaeozoic are known as graptolites. Whereas trilobites lasted throughout that era, the graptolites have been documented (until now) from the Middle Cambrian to the Lower Devonian. They are described as colonial hemichordates, with both benthic and planktonic forms. Although graptolites as a class are extinct, a related group within the phylum hemichordata are extant, with fossil ancestors also going back to the Cambrian Explosion. These animals belong to the class Pterobranchia, and can be described as living fossils. There are about 30 species alive today. Newly published is a report of the earliest and largest hemichordate zooid ever found. It is a pterobranch with the name Galeaplumosus abilus and it is preserved in exquisite detail.

"The 525-million-year-old fossil belongs to a group of tentacle-bearing creatures which lived inside hard tubes. Previously only the tubes have been seen in detail but this new specimen clearly shows the soft parts of the body including tentacles for feeding."

Galeaplumosus abilus (source here)

A modern-day pterobranch genus is Rhabdopleura. An informative description is provided here. Comparing the new fossil and Rhabdopleura leads to the exclamation: "You don't look a day over 500 million years. You and Rhabdopleura could be sisters". The detail has led to comments such as this from co-author Professor David Siveter: "Amazingly, it has exceptionally preserved soft tissues -- including arms and tentacles used for feeding -- giving unrivalled insight into the ancient biology of the group." The significant finding is that the earliest fossil hemichordate zooid looks remarkably similar to Rhabdopleura.

"Galeaplumosus abilus demonstrates stasis in pterobranch morphology, mode of coenecium construction, and probable feeding mechanism over 525 million years."

The phenomenon of stasis is something Darwinists and neo-Darwinists have struggled with. Their theory predicts gradualism, but gradualism is not what the fossil record delivers. Darwinists have sought to evade the evidence by appealing to an impoverished fossil record, but we have reached the stage where this retort must be interpreted as a form of denialism. Stephen Jay Gould declared in 1991 that "Stasis is data" and any theory of Earth history that fails to face up to this data must be abandoned. The conclusion was apparent several decades ago - the following quotations are taken from this source.

Eldredge and Tattersall (1982) wrote: "Darwin's prediction of rampant, albeit gradual, change affecting all lineages through time is refuted. The record is there, and the record speaks for tremendous anatomical conservatism. Change in the manner Darwin expected is just not found in the fossil record."
Gould (1993) wrote: "[S]tasis, or nonchange, of most fossil species during their lengthy geological lifespans was tacitly acknowledged by all paleontologists, but almost never studied explicitly because prevailing theory treated stasis as uninteresting nonevidence for nonevolution. [T]he overwhelming prevalence of stasis became an embarrassing feature of the fossil record, best left ignored as a manifestation of nothing (that is, nonevolution)."

Having said this, it should be pointed out that stasis does not mean absolute fixity. Organisms vary as alleles are shuffled, as was demonstrated by Mendel. More recent work has documented significant epigenetic variability and other causal factors that may or may not be generic. Most examples of "living fossils" are not at the species level, but more often at the genus level of classification. Most, if not all, living fossils can be understood in terms of Mendelian genetics and epigenetics. But Darwinists have approached "stasis" in defensive mode, as though the honour of their hero is at stake. It would appear that the only scientists who can think clearly about the implications of stasis are scientists with reservations about Darwinism! A recent example is Lynn Margulis, the author of the theory of endosymbiosis (some discussion is here). Margulis has been speaking about some of her radical views and the interview appears in Discover for April 2011. This is what she says about Mendelian genetics:

"In the first half of the 20th century, neo-Darwinism became the name for the people who reconciled the type of gradual evolutionary change described by Charles Darwin with Gregor Mendel's rules of heredity (which first gained widespread recognition around 1900), in which fixed traits are passed from one generation to the next. The problem was that the laws of genetics showed stasis, not change. If you have pure breeding red flowers and pure breeding white flowers, like carnations, you cross them and you get pink flowers. You back-cross them to the red parent and you could get three-quarters red, one-quarter white. Mendel showed that the grandparent flowers and the offspring flowers could be identical to each other. There was no change through time. There's no doubt that Mendel was correct."

The changes that we find in the fossil record reveal that something other than Darwinian gradualism is involved. This is what turned Margulis against neo-Darwinism:

"What you'd like to see is a good case for gradual change from one species to another in the field, in the laboratory, or in the fossil record - and preferably in all three. Darwin's big mystery was why there was no record at all before a specific point [dated to 542 million years ago by modern researchers], and then all of the sudden in the fossil record you get nearly all the major types of animals. The paleontologists Niles Eldredge and Stephen Jay Gould studied lakes in East Africa and on Caribbean islands looking for Darwin's gradual change from one species of trilobite or snail to another. What they found was lots of back-and-forth variation in the population and then - whoop - a whole new species. There is no gradualism in the fossil record."

Back to Galeaplumosus abilus which is a Lower Cambrian life form. The research paper declares that it "demonstrates stasis in pterobranch morphology, mode of coenecium construction, and probable feeding mechanism over 525 million years." This organism is found among the pioneers of the Cambrian Explosion. As soon as seawater became calcitic, they could thrive. Although there has been diversification, this has not contributed new biological information, for ancient forms are recognisably the same as their modern counterparts. For more on the Cambrian Explosion, go here.

There are major implications here for education and the importance of doing justice to evidence. Those who want to conceal the problems facing Darwinism must face the charge that they are acting more to defend their adopted paradigm than they are prepared to follow the evidence wherever it leads.

An Early Cambrian Hemichordate Zooid
Xian-guang Hou, Richard J. Aldridge, David J. Siveter, Derek J. Siveter, Mark Williams, Jan Zalasiewicz, Xiao-ya Ma
Current Biology, Volume 21, Issue 7, 612-616, 24 March 2011 | 10.1016/j.cub.2011.03.005

Summary: Hemichordates are known as fossils from at least the earliest mid-Cambrian Period (ca. 510 Ma) and are well represented in the fossil record by the graptolithinid pterobranchs ("graptolites"), which include the most abundantly preserved component of Paleozoic macroplankton. However, records of the soft tissues of fossil hemichordates are exceedingly rare and lack clear anatomical details. Galeaplumosus abilus gen. et sp. nov. from the lower Cambrian of China, an exceptionally preserved fossil with soft parts, represents by far the best-preserved, the earliest, and the largest hemichordate zooid from the fossil record; it provides new insight into the evolution of the group. The fossil is assigned to the pterobranch hemichordates on the basis of its morphological similarity to extant representatives. It has a zooidal tube (coenecium) with banding throughout comparable to that in the extant pterobranchs and a zooid with paired annulated arms bearing paired rows of annulated tentacles; it also displays a putative contractile stalk. G. abilus demonstrates stasis in pterobranch morphology, mode of coenecium construction, and probable feeding mechanism over 525 million years.

See also:

Remarkable Fossil Sea Creature - 525 Million Years Old - Shows Soft Parts of Body Including Tentacles, ScienceDaily (Mar. 28, 2011)

Many portrayals of habitats purporting to represent the Age of Dinosaurs have conifer trees and ferns, but very little ground cover. As palaeontologists continue their research, they are coming to recognise that the ecosystems were much more diverse. The earliest flowering plants are represented by pollen grains and considered to be about 130 Ma years old. However, diversity after this was rapid (see here). Recently, a strikingly beautiful fossil has been reported from China, in the Lower Cretaceous Yixian Formation.

"The fossil shows the above-ground portion of a mature plant. A single stem leads to five leaves, and one leads to a fully developed flower. The entire fossil is about 16 cm (6.3 in) tall. Leaves are innervated by branching veins, and the small, cup-shaped flower has five petals."

"Amazing. It just 'feels' like a modern plant, the whole gestalt is reminiscent of something you'd find in a meadow today." Comment from Per Ahlberg (Image source here).

The fossil remains are of a mature eudicot, a type of flowering plant. A taxonomic analysis of the plant's form has led to the fossil being placed among the Ranunculaceae, a family within the eudicots that includes buttercups and crowroot plants. By all assessments, the description in the journal Nature reveals a "remarkably developed species" rather than a primitive ancestral form. The sedimentary rock preserving this fossil has also yielded several other significant angiosperm species with an age considered to be about 124 Ma.

"This fossil opens up a new way of thinking about the evolution of some of the first flowering plants," said Indiana University Bloomington biologist David Dilcher, the Nature paper's American coauthor. "We are also beginning to understand that the explosive radiation of all flowering plants about 111 million years ago has had a long history that began with the slower diversification of many families of eudicots over 10, perhaps 15 million years earlier."

Some questions deserve to be asked about the phrase "slower diversification of many families of eudicots": if the evolution of the angiosperms was an "abominable mystery" to Darwin, the abrupt appearance of a "remarkably developed" member of the Ranunculaceae, with no earlier fossilised ancestors apart from pollen, deserves to be described as doubly abominable for Darwinism! The buttercup cousin is nothing like an intermediate form, but it has lots of features that are present in extant genera of the Ranunculaceae.

"When we look at the branching relationships of the tree for this group, the Ranunculaceae is at the end of several branches going to the other families, such as the poppies," Dilcher said. "As a result, we believe that prior to 122 to 124 million years ago, several families of flowering plants had already begun to diverge. How much older the eudicots are we do not know yet, but this fossil suggests their origin certainly goes further back in the Cretaceous, perhaps even into the Jurassic."

The earliest record of eudicots comes from fossil pollen dated at 125 Ma. The search is on for earlier body fossils and also for pollen. The problem for Darwinists is that they have no other avenues for interpreting the data. There is no alternative but to adopt the hypothesis of earlier incremental transformations to account for the evolution of angiosperms with subsequent diversification. To maintain credibility, they have to do what Darwin did and invoke the imperfection of the fossil record. But maybe they are pursuing a dream, and the data is actually calling them to wake up!

A eudicot from the Early Cretaceous of China
Ge Sun, David L. Dilcher, Hongshan Wang & Zhiduan Chen
Nature, 471, 625-628. (31 March 2011) | doi:10.1038/nature09811

Abstract: The current molecular systematics of angiosperms recognizes the basal angiosperms and five major angiosperm lineages: the Chloranthaceae, the magnoliids, the monocots, Ceratophyllum and the eudicots, which consist of the basal eudicots and the core eudicots. The eudicots form the majority of the angiosperms in the world today. The flowering plants are of exceptional evolutionary interest because of their diversity of over 250,000 species and their abundance as the dominant vegetation in most terrestrial ecosystems, but little is known of their very early history. In this report we document an early presence of eudicots during the Early Cretaceous Period. Diagnostic characters of the eudicot fossil Leefructus gen. nov. include simple and deeply trilobate leaves clustered at the nodes in threes or fours, basal palinactinodromous primary venation, pinnate secondary venation, and a long axillary reproductive axis terminating in a flattened receptacle bearing five long, narrow pseudo-syncarpous carpels. These morphological characters suggest that its affinities are with the Ranunculaceae, a basal eudicot family. The fossil co-occurs with Archaefructus sinensis and Hyrcantha decussata whereas Archaefructus liaoningensis comes from more ancient sediments. Multiple radiometric dates of the Lower Cretaceous Yixian Formation place the bed yielding this fossil at 122.6 - 125.8 million years old. The earliest fossil records of eudicots are 127 to 125 million years old, on the basis of pollen. Thus, Leefructus gen. nov. suggests that the basal eudicots were already present and diverse by the latest Barremian and earliest Aptian.

See also:

Fossil Is Best Look Yet at an Ancestor of Buttercups, ScienceDaily (Mar. 31, 2011)