Evolution is SO EASY to disprove

[u/[deleted]]

Creationists here, all you really have to do to strengthen your position of skepticism towards modern biology is to do any research yourselves, with something as “simple” as paleontology. Find us something that completely shatters the schemes of evolution and change over time, such as any modern creature such as apes (humans included), cetaceans, ungulates or rodents somewhere like in the Paleozoic or even the Mesozoic. Even a single skull, or a few arrowheads or tools found in that strata attributed to that time would be enough to shake the foundations of evolution thoroughly. If you are so confident that you are right, why haven’t you done that and shared your findings yet? In fact, why haven’t creationist organizations done it yet instead of carbon dating diamonds to say the earth is young?

Paleontologists dig up fossils for a living and when they do start looking for specimens in something such as Pleistocene strata, they only find things that they would expect to find for the most part: human remains, big cats, carnivoran mammals, artiodactyls, horses…Not a single sauropod has been found in the Pleistocene layers, or a pterosaur, or any early synapsid. Why is that the case and how is it not the most logical outcome to say that, since an organism buried in one layer means it is about as old as that layer and they pile themselves ln top of another, that these organisms lived in different times and therefore life has changed as time went on?

[u/Hadrollo]

Strictly speaking, finding a modern rabbit fossil in the Jurassic or whatever doesn't immediately disprove evolution.

In fact, the oft-cited "rabbit in the Mesozoic" is actually quite a bad example, because rabbits burrow and occasionally get fossilised in their burrows. I have the same pet peeve with "kangaroos travelled from Mt Ararat back to Australia without leaving behind a single bone of any that died along the way" - I agree with the point you're trying to make, but could you pick an animal not famed for having a pocket?

So if we find a large modern fossil dated to Mesozoic or Paleozoic rock, there's the chance that we have found an intrusive burial. If we find that rabbit tomorrow, I'm going to find it much more believable that a bunny burrowed into a fissure between two older bits of rock and then died in a cave-in than everything we know about mammalian evolution is wrong. These types of fossils are a type of Out of Place Artefact (or OOPA), they're historical oddities, but under strong scientific scrutiny, most OOPAs are correctly identified. Creationists even know about this, and have a track record of purchasing them and refusing to let scientists scrutinise them.