New Genetic-Clock Research Challenges Millions of Years by Nathaniel T. Jeanson, Ph.D.
Does a 6,000-year-old earth match the findings of modern science? Secular scientists have answered forcefully in the negative for generations. However, their arguments rest on the assumption of constant natural processes and constant rates, and new discoveries from ICR’s geneticists present a strong challenge to these claims. Genetic “Clocks” Ticking within every species is a “clock” of sorts that measures the length of time that a species has existed on the earth. Since DNA is passed on imperfectly from parent to offspring, each generation grows more genetically distant from prior generations. Consequently, with each successive generation reproductively isolated groups within species grow more and more genetically distant from each other. This is true for DNA found not only in the nucleus of the cell but also in the cellular energy factories termed mitochondria . Mitochondrial DNA is present in both males and females, but unlike nuclear DNA, it is inherited only from mot...