An earthworm news story was recently posted that openly questions Darwin’s gradual and slow evolutionary progress in the living world.¹ The first paragraph of the EurekAlert! article defines the problem of the Darwinian gradualist approach that has been touted by non-evolutionists for well over a century: the missing links are missing.^2–4 In fact, Darwin stated that the lack of fossil evidence was “perhaps the most obvious and serious objection which can be urged against the theory [of evolution].”⁵

This EurekAlert! earthworm genome article then presents an alternative to Darwinian gradualism—the infamous punctuated equilibrium model of Gould and Eldredge that was proposed in 1972.

Actually, evolutionists don’t mention missing links much anymore. With the introduction of “punctuated equilibrium” in the early 70s, they seem to have made their peace with the lack of transitional forms in the fossil record. Their claim is that basic animal types exhibited “stasis” (or equilibrium) for a long period, but they changed rapidly (punctuation) as the environment underwent rapid change, so rapidly they had little opportunity to leave fossils. Thus we wouldn’t expect to find transitional forms or missing links. Fair enough, but the fact is we don’t find them. Evolution says they did exist, but we have no record of them. Creation says they never existed, and agree that we have no record of them.⁶

Punctuated equilibrium is supposedly a fast-acting genetic mechanism that reorganized the entire genome of oceanic worms, according to Spanish evolutionists. But the scientists make a massive and unscientific extrapolation and suggest that this is part of the reason ocean creatures transitioned to land. The ScienceDaily article stated (quoting researcher Rosa Fernández),

The analysis of these genomes has revealed an unexpected result: the annelids’ genomes were not transformed gradually, as Neo-Darwinian theory would predict, but in isolated explosions of deep genetic remodelling. “The enormous reorganisation of the genomes we observed in the worms as they moved from the ocean to land cannot be explained with the parsimonious mechanism Darwin proposed; our observations chime much more with Gould and Eldredge’s theory of punctuated equilibrium.”⁷

The biologists “sequenced for the first time the high-quality genome of various earthworms, and compared to [sic] them to other closely related annelid species (leeches and bristle worms or polychaetes).”⁷ Sequencing genomes of creatures alive today is empirical science. What they could not do is go back 200 million years to when the annelid ancestors were still alive and make a genetic analysis. Indeed, polychaete worms have no evolutionary ancestors. They are the only annelids to have a fossil record going back to the early Cambrian (the Atdabanian). They have always been polychaete worms, and leeches have always been leeches.

Leeches are a unique group of annelids arising from an ancestor that would be characterized as a freshwater oligochaete worm. Comparative biology of the oligochaetes and the leeches reveals that body plan changes in the oligochaete-to-leech transition probably occurred by addition or modification of the terminal steps in embryonic development and that they were likely driven by a change in the feeding behavior in the ancestor of leeches.⁸ (emphasis added)

Vargas-Chavez et al. stated in their Nature article about the supposed “origin of non-marine annelids” that these worms “exhibit a remarkable tolerance for chromosomal rearrangements,”⁹ but this is not evolution.

This annelid news story is extremely theoretical, appealing to hypothetical, unobserved ancestors that supposedly lived over 200 million years ago and underwent a major evolutionary transition, doing so with great precision.

After putting together each of the genomic jigsaw puzzles, the team was able to travel back in time with great precision more than 200 million years, to when the ancestors of the sequenced species were alive. “This is an essential episode in the evolution of life on our planet, given that many species, such as worms and vertebrates, which had been living in the ocean, now ventured onto land for the first time.” comments Rosa Fernández.⁷

Ironically, in humans this “extreme genetic reorganisation”⁷ is found only in cancer cells: “The only difference is that while these genomic breakdowns and reorganisations are tolerated by the worms, in humans they lead to diseases.”⁷ This should tell the reader something.

To conclude, there is no way to go back in time to observe the movement of worms from ocean to land for the first time. Even the fossil record offers no documentation, according to Dr. Michael Ishida of Cambridge: “’Since fossil evidence is limited, we have an incomplete picture of how ancient life made the transition to land.’”¹⁰ But evolutionary theory says the worms did transition; therefore, the significant reorganization of the worm’s genomes must be shoehorned within this strange ocean-to-land context.

Non-evolutionists see the fascinating genomic mechanisms within these worms as worthy of more research, especially since “the chromosomes of these modern worms are much more flexible than those of vertebrates and other model organisms.”⁷ But the investigation should not be shackled by evolutionary (either Darwinian gradualism or punctuated equilibrium) interpretations.

References

1. Earthworms Reveal an Evolutionary Mechanism Which Could Defy Darwin. Spanish National Research Council. Posted on eurekalert.org June 18, 2025.
2. Sherwin, F. A Four-Legged Snake? Creation Science Update. Posted on ICR.org December 16, 2021.
3. Thomas, B. More Evolutionists Say ‘Ida’ Is Not a Missing Link. Creation Science Update. Posted on ICR.org March 19, 2010.
4. Sherwin, F. Is a Spiny Slug the Mollusc’s Ancestor? Creation Science Update. Posted on ICR.org October 24, 2024.
5. Darwin, C. 1859. On the Origin of the Species. London: John Murray.
6. Morris, J. 2006. What’s a Missing Link? Acts & Facts. 35 (4).
7. Defying Darwin: Scientists Discover Worms Rewrote Their DNA to Survive on Land. Spanish National Research Council. Posted on sciencedaily.com June 18, 2025.
8. Kuo, D. and Y. Lai. 2019. On the Origin of Leeches by Evolution of Development. Developmental Growth and Differentiation. 61 (1): 31.
9. Vargas-Chavez, C. et al. An Episodic Burst of Massive Genomic Rearrangements and the Origin of Non-Marine Annelids. Nature. Posted on nature.com June 18, 2025.
10. ‘Paleo-Robots’ Provide an Experimental Approach for Understanding how Fish Started to Walk on Land. University of Cambridge. Posted on phys.org October 23, 2024.

* Dr. Sherwin is a science 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.