Re: How Plants Drove First Animals Onto Land

Hey Brandon,

Well, I suppose that since you’ve returned to our evolution/creation discussion, you must be feeling less stressed.  If that’s true, I’m glad. :)  And hopefully it means that either some stressors have gone away or you’ve found good ways to manage the stress.

Now to the article...  I don’t know what to think, and I’m not sure what you want me to get from it—it appears to me that the researchers took some data about molybdenum and oxygen concentrations, then built a story around it to fit evolutionary ideas.  At least the author first admitted the uncertainty of the models for the distant past before making his assertions about the meaning of the data.

According to another article (http://live.psu.edu/story/38514), researchers at Penn State have found that there was as much atmospheric O2  three and a half billion years ago as there is now, as evidenced by the presence of O2 in the very deepest of rocks sampled—very different from what is claimed in the article you just sent.   See also http://www.nature.com/ngeo/journal/v2/n4/abs/ngeo465.html .  In your article, precursors to plants evolved 400-550 million years ago.  According to the Penn State article, plants or their precursors must have been around 3.5 billion years ago.  If both atmospheric O2 and plants (or their precursors) have been around almost since the beginning, why could not other plants and animals have been around since then, too?  (By the way, the Penn State study stated a conclusion based on what is already known about chemistry and geology.  Your article stated a conclusion, about plants driving first animals onto land, based on evolutionary theory.  Therefore, I think the Penn State study has a higher value.)

The Penn State findings fit well with Biblical creation theory, as it is consistent with the idea that the earth was livable and had plants on it almost from the beginning.  Of course, I disagree with the dating in all the articles, as I’m a young earth proponent and question the millions and billions of years—but that’s for another discussion. :o)

Susan