DNA Proves Existence of a Designer

[Angrboda]

The whole pattern can be explained much more easily by saying that a lot of new species evolved over the last few hundred thousand years. That would not be surprising, because most species are indeed fairly young.

We don't know for sure how long the average species lasts, partly because the fossil record is imperfect and partly because we don't have a firm definition of what a species is anyway. But it's been estimated that species typically last somewhere between 500,000 and 10 million years. It follows that a lot of species on Earth must have originated in the last few hundred thousand years. For instance, polar bears have been estimated to be about 400,000 years old as a species.

Stoeckle and Thaler's findings would have us believe that 90 per cent of species are less than 200,000 years old. I don't think their mitochondrial DNA data is enough to show that, and studies of whole genomes and fossils will give us more reliable dates that I would expect to be older. But they won't be that much older. Given that the planet has been in and out of glacial periods over the last 2.5 million years, plus all the upheavals caused by humans and our extinct relatives, the finding that most species alive today are fairly young shouldn't surprise us.

(Forbes)