Living Fossils, by Dr. Carl Werner {Book Review}

***WARNING: IF YOU ARE AN EVOLUTIONIST, THEN PLEASE DO NOT READ THIS POST!!! IT IS VERY MUCH AGAINST EVOLUTION!!! (warning ended)***

I know. You must be saying, "WOW! She's read a lot of books lately!" Yes--I have been. But, of course, I've been working on a lot of them for about 3 weeks! I really enjoyed reading this school book. You may recal I posted about this book about three weeks ago, but I'll put all of my review in here.
NOTE: since this is a scientific book, and there are scientific names in it, I have copied the way they had it in there. Therefore, the species names are in red.

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Monday, September 17, 2012
The author begins to tell his story. He was raised a Catholic, and never questioned the teachings of the Bible until he got to his high school years. Then he learned about Ontogeny Recapitulates Phylogeny, a principle created by Dr. Ernst Haeckel in the late 1800s, portraying that human embryos retrace the history of evolution in their embryonic stages. Years later, the author found out that the drawings demonstrating ORP were extremely inaccurate, and shown to be false even in Haeckel's time! And they're still in textbooks today—even though they were shown to be false 100 years ago.

Wednesday, September 19, 2012
Today, I learned about how the author, in the middle of his sophomore year of college, went out for a pizza with a classmate. While there, the classmate asked four important questions that would change his life. A seed of doubt was planted there, and he began researching to see if evolution was really true. From then on, he was on a life long quest to find out what the truth was.

Thursday, September 20, 2012
Today, I started chapter two: How Can You Verify Evolution? There were four evidences for evolution he gave that he believed when he started trying to find out what the truth was. 1) Ontogeny Recapitulates Phylogeny, 2) Most scientists believe it, 3) Ape-men, and 4) Some fossil evidence of animals changing from one animal type into another. Then there were three evidences against Evolution: 1) Too many missing links, 2) The big bang theory does not work, and 3) Life could not begin spontaneously. It's getting VERY interesting!

Friday, September 21, 2012
Today, I read about how he studied everything about evolution he could for the next eighteen years. After that time, he began to start finding out things first-hand, rather than second-hand, as he was getting from books, articles, etc. He began to study living fossils in the “older” layers. And he took a trip out west.

Monday, September 24, 2012
Their journey out west begins. They landed in the Denver airport, and set off on their adventure. They weren't getting any very good clues, until he interviewed a scientist that was trying to prove that dinosaurs did not become extinct after a asteroid hit the earth. The scientist (Dr. William Clemens) argued that, “If an asteroid impacted the earth and killed off the dinosaurs, it should also have killed off the butterflies, bees, frogs and salamanders that were living with the dinosaurs.”

From that time on, he learned how to ask. He stopped challenging the whole evolutionary theory, and it just focused on dinosaur extinction. (Before, he was asking, “Have you found any fossils of modern animal or plant species at this dinosaur dig site?”, now he was saying, “Some scientists, such as Dr. Bill Clemens, have suggested an asteroid did not cause the extinction of the dinosaurs because environmentally vulnerable animals, like salamanders and butterflies, lived through this dinosaur extinction event. At this site, where you are working, have you found any animals that survived the dinosaur extinction event—any modern-appearing animals that are still alive today?”) By re-wording the question, he was able to make a list of quite a few “modern-appearing” animals and plants.

Tuesday, September 25, 2012
Today, he started talking about the “Biological Classification System”. Here, he explains how they name something through scientific classification (Kingdom > Phylum (or, Division if you're talking about plants) > Class > Order > Family > Genus > Species). Here are two examples he gives:

Sassafras Tree
Kingdom	Plant
Division	Flowering Plants
Class	Two Leaves around Each Seed
Order	Laurels
Family	Laurel Family
Genus	Sassafras
Species	Albidum
Official Name	Sassafras albidum

Horse
Kingdom	Animal
Phylum	Vertebrate
Class	Mammal
Order	Hoofed Odd Toe
Family	Horse
Genus	Equus
Species	Caballus
Official Name	Equus caballus

Fascinating research!

Wednesday, September 26, 2012
Today, he told about how scientists can so easily put the wrong species name on a fossil because it looks a little different than modern animals. He used the example of how many different kinds of dogs there are in the world, and how they could be mistaken for another species.

Thursday, September 27, 2012
Today, I learned about all the different variations in human beings. He had some examples of variations in American oysters, and also in sassafras leaves. There was a comparison of a fossil Magnolia leaf, and one in real life. Then he had 14 different leaf pictures, all of leaves from the same tree! Wow!

Friday, September 28, 2012
Today, I learned about brittle stars. There were pictures of a fossilized brittle star (found in a dinosaur layer), and a modern one. Looks VERY similar! Hmm... (*innocent face* “What? Me? Questioning the silly great theory of evolution?”)

Monday, October 1, 2012
Today, I studied comparisons of quite a few different aquatic animals. There were sea urchins, sea biscuits, starfish, and sea cucumbers. It was really interesting!

Tuesday, October 2, 2012
Today, I read about Long-Stalked Crinoids. They're very interesting, and both fossils and real ones look very similar. Then I read about Feather Stars, which are very much the same also. I think I'm beginning to really like this book. It rings of truth.

Wednesday, October 3, 2012
I read the chapter about Aquatic Arthropods today. It was really interesting! It included shrimp, lobsters, crabs, prawns, and crayfish.

Thursday, October 4, 2012
I read about land arthropods today. There were pictures of a termite nest from the petrified forest in Arizona. There were also pictures of a dragonfly, water skater, water-bug, woodwasp, beetle, and many other animals.

Monday, October 8, 2012
Today, I read about bivalve shellfish and snails! There were lots of different animals, including freshwater clams, mussels, clams, oysters, moon snails, and much, much more. I am really enjoying this book.

Tuesday, October 9, 2012
Today, I read about different types of shellfish. There were Nautilus shells first (looks b.e.a.u.t.i.f.u.l.!!!) There were also lamp shells and tusk shells, besides several other kinds. I also studied an earthworm fossil (and picture of modern one), and tube worms. It's really interesting how many different kinds have been found! :D

Wednesday, October 10, 2012
Sponges, corals, and bony fish were what I read about today! I didn't realize how many different kinds of sponges there are out there. (Have you ever heard of a glass sponge?) I also read about different kinds of fish. The lungfish sounds interesting!

Thursday, October 11, 2012
I started out with reading about cartilaginous fish today! This includes sharks and rays. There was one fossilized shovelnose ray(1) that looked almost exactly the same as the modern shovelnose ray(2)—and their scientific names were—(genus-name, species-name) (1)Belemnobatis sismondae, and (2)Rhinobatos productus! VERY different. Hmm...I think someone (probably an evolutionist) was REALLY messed up!

Friday, October 12, 2012
Today, I read about amphibians—mainly frogs and salamanders! Have you ever heard of the “Hellbender”? If you haven't, be comforted. I hadn't either. And I'm kinda glad. They look STRANGE!!! I also read about crocodilians (alligators, crocodiles and gavials). Gavials look funny—they've got a REALLY long, thin snout!

Monday, October 15, 2012
I read about snakes (love pictures of those things for some odd reason! :D Always have.) and birds today! In the lizards section (somewhere in between snakes and birds), I saw pictures of Iguanas. I'd like to see one in real life sometime. They look interesting!

Tuesday, October 16, 2012
Today, I read about mammals found as fossils. I found it interesting that not many bones have been collected—when scientists are looking for dinosaur bones, they pass the mammals up. They like seeing the dinosaurs better than the mammals. Also, the dinosaur bones can be huge—imagine that you've found a 4 foot dinosaur leg bone, and there's a 2-3 inch mammal bone. Which one would you take? Of course, the dinosaur bone! It's bigger—and more of a novelty. So not many mammal fossils have been taken. There were a few (how about a 3 foot long, 30-pound collie-sized Tasmanian Devil-like mammal?) that he told about (altogether, he saw three mammal skeletons). Very interesting research!

Wednesday, October 17, 2012
Today, I read about spore-forming plants (ferns, horsetails, moss, etc.) and flowering plants! It was interesting reading about peat moss—I've heard of it, but never seen a picture of it. Very interesting. The chapter about flowering plants was interesting. In the beginning, he told about a “Dr. Carl Sagan”, who said that “The dinosaurs perished around the time of the first flower.” Later on, he showed two museum posters that showed just the opposite—they both featured different flowering trees! The two posters were from the Milwaukee Public Museum, and the New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science. It reminded me of when Jesus was on trial—the chief priests had a REALLY HARD time finding witnesses that agreed with each other. (Matthew 26:59-60a, “Now the chief priests, and elders, and all the council, sought false witness against Jesus, to put him to death; But found none: yea, though many false witnesses came, yet found they none.”) The evolutionary scientists cannot agree. Therefore…is evolution really real? I have serious questions. There have been LOTS of fossils collected that have flowering trees' flowers and/or leaves.

I finished the first part of the book, the “evidence” part today. Yay! Almost done. (though, it is an interesting book.)

Thursday, October 18, 2012
I finished the book today. I'm both sad, and glad. Sad, because I've finished such a good book, and glad because I have one more book read for school! And it was a very worthwhile book, I'm glad to have that put on the shelf beside other worthwhile books! Anyways…what I read about today…his conclusions. He found fossils of all major animal phyla living today in dinosaur rock layers, and also all major plant divisions living today in dinosaur rock layers! WOW! This is like…SO obvious. I wish all people would believe in creation. But then, I guess…there wouldn't be much need for books like that anymore! :D Anyways…I enjoyed this book. A. LOT.!!!