No new phyla, classes, or orders have appeared
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Claim
No new phyla, orders, or classes have been observed appearing. (The implication is that there is no macroevolution)
Source
Responses
- This is exactly as it should be. According to evolutionary theory, new species are sub-varieties of older ones, and new groups are nested within old groups. Because all known life is descended from older groups and represents variations on it rather than completely new creations, any new species appearing today will by definition fall within existing phyla, orders, classes, and so on.
- "New" examples of these categories actually do sometimes "appear", but in a different sense: they "appear" only when a species is discovered that represents an ancestral group that was previously unknown as a category in the fossil record.
- The fossil record, on the other hand, contains many example of new categories appearing and then diversifying into sub-categories, just as evolutionary theory suggests.
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External Links
- Theobald, Douglas, 2003. 29+ Evidences for Macroevolution: The Scientific Case for Common Descent. [1]
Related claims
See Also
- Why is Creationism not a Scientific Theory?
- Theory of Evolution
- Stebbins on no transitional forms between phyla

