It is widely known that vast numbers of fossils—vertebrate and invertebrate—have been discovered incredibly well-preserved.^1,2 Such preservation points clearly to a sudden, catastrophic event that overwhelmed and buried creatures in multiple tons of sedimentary rock—like a massive flood perhaps.

The late Dr. John Morris of ICR described some of the Genesis Flood activity.

Today when a volcano erupts under water, or if there is an underwater earthquake or mud slide, it causes a tsunami or tidal wave; a dynamic energy wave which pushes water toward the continents, devastating coastal areas. At the start of the Flood all the fountains of the great deep were rent open sending repeated pulses of water toward the continents from every direction bringing sediments and marine fossils to the land. Cyclic ocean currents and tidal actions would have left their imprint on these sediments.³

It’s little wonder that with this sort of global Flood activity many of these trillions of creatures would be well preserved, including the huge Phylum Arthropoda.

Arthropoda is the largest phylum on Earth, consisting of organisms with paired, jointed appendages and chitinous (nitrogen-containing polysaccharide) exoskeletons. The fossil record shows arthropods have always been arthropods.⁴ Evolutionist Allaby said, “They first appeared in the Cambrian, already well diversified.”⁵

This does not sound like arthropods evolving from another creature. Hickman et al. stated, “Biologists assume that the ancestral arthropod had a segmented body,” and “the ancestral arthropod is assumed to have had one pair [of appendages] per segment [emphasis added].”⁶

Recently, a new species of a fossilized arthropod was discovered. A researcher is calling it Keurbos susanae, or Sue for short.⁷ This particular fossil was unique in having perfectly preserved insides. The report stated that fossilized arthropods usually have their external features fossilized, “whereas ‘Sue’ is the complete opposite because it is her insides that are fossilized,” hence her being described as “inside out.”⁷ This multi-segmented arthropod has been known for 25 years and has been investigated by University of Leicester palaeontologist Sarah Gabbott.

The ScienceDaily article stated,

Lead author Professor Sarah Gabbott from the School of Geography, Geology and the Environment said: “‘Sue’ is an inside-out, legless, headless wonder. Remarkably her insides are a mineralised time-capsule: muscles, sinews, tendons and even guts all preserved in unimaginable detail. And yet her durable carapace, legs and head are missing – lost to decay over 440 million years ago.”⁷

The scientists cannot divorce themselves from deep evolutionary time⁸ and must credit Sue’s preservation to “a strange chemical alchemy” rather than its Flood deposition about 4,500 years ago.

The conditions in the sediments where Sue came to rest were toxic in the extreme. There was no oxygen but worse than that there was deadly (and stinking) hydrogen sulphide dissolved in the water. The researchers suspect that a strange chemical alchemy was at work in creating the fossil and its unusual inside-out preservation.⁷

And not only was this arthropod unexpectedly well preserved, but K. susanae also doesn’t fit into the bizarre and unscientific tree of life, where all creatures somehow evolved from a single unknown life form.⁹ The authors state, “it remains a mystery how [K. susanae] fits into the evolutionary tree of life,” and “We are now sure she was a primitive marine arthropod but her precise evolutionary relationships remain frustratingly elusive.”⁷

Indeed, Gabbott et al. stated in their Paleontology paper, “Comparison with a phylogenetically disparate suite of similarly homonomous, multisegmented taxa indicates no convincing synapomorphies.”¹⁰ In other words, K. susanae fits no evolutionary expectation.

What is Sue (K. susanae)? It’s a unique arthropod (i.e., a new genus and species) where zoologists have described its internal anatomy and endoskeleton. Researchers hope to “provide a taphonomic [studying the processes that affects a creature’s remains from the time of death to discovery as fossils] basis for anatomical interpretations.”¹⁰ But in the end, it’s an extinct, remarkably preserved arthropod with no evolutionary connections that is best explained by the global Flood.

References

1. Thomas, B. Researchers Find Fossil Salamanders’ Last Meals. Creation Science Update. Posted on ICR.org March 12, 2012.
2. Sherwin, F. More Exceptional Preservation of Organic Material. Creation Science Update. Posted on ICR.org August 23, 2018.
3. Morris, J. 2004. What Geologic Processes Were Operating During the Flood? Acts & Facts. 33 (9).
4. Sherwin, F. A New and Fascinating Arthropod Fossil. Creation Science Update. Posted on ICR.org September 28, 2023.
5. Allaby, M. 2020. Oxford Dictionary of Zoology. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 54.
6. Hickman, C. et al. 2020. Integrated Principles of Zoology. New York, NY: McGraw Hill, 425.
7. New Species Revealed after 25 Years of Study on ‘Inside Out’ Fossil -- and Named after Discoverer’s Mum. University of Leicester. Posted on sciencedaily.com March 26, 2025.
8. Thomas, B. Cyclostratigraphy: Another Round of Circular Reasoning? Creation Science Update. Posted on ICR.org June 23, 2014.
9. Thomas, B. Shared Genes Undercut Evolutionary Tree. Creation Science Update. Posted on ICR.org February 25, 2011.
10. Gabbott, S. et al. 2025. A New Euarthropod from the Soom Shale (Ordovician) Konservat-Lagerstätte, South Africa, with Exceptional Preservation of the Connective Endoskeleton and Myoanatomy. Papers in Paleontology. 11 (2).

* Dr. Sherwin is a news writer at the Institute for Creation Research. He earned an M.A. in invertebrate zoology from the University of Northern Colorado and received an honorary doctorate of science from Pensacola Christian College.