Bats have been in the news lately,1 but bats themselves are not new—they were created on Day 5 of Creation Week, along with other flying creatures.
Bats are a large and fascinating group of flying mammals. They include over 1,400 species. Not surprisingly, the fossil record shows bats have always been bats. They suddenly appear in a most un-Darwinian manner.
According to an evolutionary publication, “Bats pop up in the fossil record around 50 million years ago.”1 The article continues,
Mammals in general also have a cryptic origin as well as their diversification, “While the origin of mammals has provided one set of puzzles, the diversification of mammals is also ripe with questions.” 2
Two bat fossils found in early Eocene sediments in Wyoming (Icaronycteris and Onychonycteris) are still 100% bats. In fact, they are already designed with their feet turned backwards so they could hang upside down.
This is indeed an enigma for Darwinists. Think of all the transitions that must occur to turn a creature such as a rodent into a bat. The front legs must slowly turn into membranous wings with an amazing aerodynamic ability. Biosonar (or echolocation) must evolve where there was no biosonar. Is it any wonder that “the evolution of echolocation in bats has been hard to resolve.”3
Non-evolutionists predict that the origin of bats will always be one of evolution’s greatest puzzles, because bats were created as bats on Day 5 of Creation Week just thousands of years ago.
References
1. Black, R. Why Bats Are One of Evolution’s Greatest Puzzles. Smithsonian Magazine. Published on smithsonianmag.com April 21, 2020, accessed April 23, 2020.
2. Smith, K. 2015. Placental Evolution in Therian Mammals. In Great Transformations in Vertebrate Evolution. K. Dial, et al, ed. University of Chicago Press, 205.
3. Benton, M. 2024. Vertebrate Paleontology, 5th Edition. Wily Blackwell, 540.
*Dr. Sherwin is a science writer & speaker at ICR. He earned his master’s in invertebrate zoology from the University of Northern Colorado.and an honorary doctorate of science from Pensacola Christian College.
