Lazarus Effect: Goblin Shark

We reported a while back that a rare "Frilled Shark" was found swimming around in the coastal waters off Japan. Once again, another "Lazarus" species has been spotted, as reported by National Geographic Online. For review, a Lazarus species is one that is "back from the dead", thought extinct, but now found swimming/walking/crawling around: a creative choice of names by someone who doesn't believe in God or the Bible.

This species closely resembles sharks that have been unearthed long before in the fossil record. Antique biological journals record that it went extinct around 57 million years ago in the Eocene epoch, until, that is, it was found swimming around the Pacific, Indian and Atlantic oceans. Twelve breeding grounds have been identified spanning the globe. Evolutionists had grand ideas about how it evolved and why it became extinct. But their ideas have shown to be mere speculation.

The Goblin Shark is remarkable in that it can grow, some believe, to a maximum length of around 6 meters! Species of 3.9 meters have been caught in deep-ocean nets or washed up on shore. At that size, you'd think someone would have seen one before the last century or so. But it's no real surprise they've been able to escape humanity's attention for the last 6,500 years; they live and die at depths below 200 meters, where no sunlight can penetrate.

If you are interested in the topic of Biology and species identification, then the oceans and Indonesia are, by far, the hottest places to look. Dozens of new species are being identified each month.

While many species remain known only from the fossil record, similar methods were used to identify their origins and status as were used for the Frilled and Goblin sharks. One could expect that an equal amount of artistic license and subsequent inaccuracy plagues those species' biographies as well. These many Lazarus species, so called, demonstrate that evolutionary biologists really have no special powers of post-constructing the pre-historic past any more than Sister Destiny has the power to pre-tell the future.