Does the claimed age of the fossil tell us something new about the evolution of decapods? The more we investigate the fossil record, the larger fossil ranges tend to get.3 Aciculopoda adds to this trend by extending the known fossil range of shrimps and prawns from the early Triassic (‘dated’ by uniformitarians to 245 Ma) to late Devonian (360 Ma), completely skipping the Carboniferous and Permian geologic ‘ages’. This is a 115-million-year extension in fossil range on the basis of one fossil! This is one more, particularly extreme, example of a progressive randomization of the fossil record.
The classification of strata in the geologic column depends on index fossils, which are supposed to only occur over short spans in the rocks, and thus enable researchers to globally correlate strata. However, if fossils as a rule continually have their stratigraphic ranges extended, how reliable can the geologic column concept be since it relies on index fossils?4