Is there anything to it?
Yes, but, unfortunately for creationists, not what the reporter led on.
From Dr PZ Myers blog:
quote:
This is not saying that there was a single instant in the last 200,000 years from which all modern species arose simultaneously. It’s a statement about the process of speciation: species arise from isolation of a limited subset of an existing population, which is why they have limited variation in their DNA barcodes, followed by an expansion of the new species’ population, during which the DNA barcodes accumulate variation slowly.
The study
did not find "that 9 out of 10 animal species on the planet came to being at the same time as humans did some 100,000 to 200,000 years ago."
Bad reporting of an interesting but not an evolution-busting result. The actual result, without the reporting hype, is not outside evolutionary expectations.
Myers blog on the subject:
https://freethoughtblogs.com/...-of-science-articles-is-hard
Myers blog site:
https://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/
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