In 2015, Geneticists
claimed to have unlocked the genetic secrets to how dinosaur snouts evolved in
to bird snouts through a series of conducted genetic experiments conducted on
chickens embryos. The New York Times reported that geneticists,
Bhart-Anjan Bhullar of Yale University and Arhat Abzhanov of Harvard University
by releasing a chemical agent into the developing chicken embryos that
interfered with the production of certain proteins called Fgf8 and Lef1 and
altered the way they developed. According to their studies, all living
creatures possess these proteins which are responsible for the construction of
facial features, but the difference in their development in birds is that these
proteins develop in a single cell patch whereas in other animals they form in
separate cell patches.
The geneticists figured
that if they could alter the protein development in the chicken embryos, the
chickens would fail to produce beaks and they would be able to determine as to
how dinosaur snouts might have evolved into beaks.
The chickens failed to produce
beaks as the geneticists predicted and the experiment was hailed as proof of
evolution, but the experiment was not without its skeptics. Dr. Ralph S.
Marcucio of the San Francisco based University of California expressed that the
evolutionary mechanisms from dinosaur to bird are much more complicated than a
simple genetic experiment. According to the New York Times article, Dr.
Marcucio noted the chemicals used to block the Fgf8 and Lef1 proteins had
"toxic side effects and can kill cells" and further stated that
"the altered anatomy of the chicken skulls might not be an example of
reverse evolution, just dying tissue" and further went on to expressed his
doubts about the alleged central role the Fgf8 and Lef1 proteins play in beak
formation. The New York Times also noted that the Fgf8 protein
"disappears from the region that will become the face" long before
the development of the premaxillae (an alleged beak precursor)
The geneticists simply
switched off certain genes which caused the chicken embryos to develop
premaxillae snouts rather than modern beaks but Marcuio stated, "It really
makes me suspicious that it's not involved in some kind of switch."
He also stated that the mechanism for the transition from snout to beak would
be much more complicated than the alteration of certain gene development.
A transition from snout
to beak would indeed require more than just a simple switching on and off of
certain genes. It would require a mechanism not observed in nature and
which is biologically impossible, and that is an increase in complexity and
genetic information not already present.
Scientists have for years
attempted, through hereditary and genetic experimentations on various animals,
to figure out how one creature can change into another, but all that has been
produced so far are degenerate mutants and monstrosities. Dinosaurs
always produced dinosaurs and chickens have always produced chickens as God
created both to do (Gen. 1:20-31).
All the geneticists did
in this particular case was produce some very miserable creatures with deformed beaks.
End Notes:
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