Spirituality
15 Sep 05
05 Oct 05
Originally posted by AThousandYoung“In spite of the examples, it remains true that most new species, genera and families appear in the record suddenly (the Cambrian Explosion), and are not led up to by known, gradual, completely continuous transitional sequences.”
[bThe fossil record is one source of evidence for this idea, as are morphological and genetic observations in living organisms and observations of speciation occurring in nature.[/b]
-George Gaylord Simpson-
05 Oct 05
Originally posted by HalitoseWhat do you make of that?
“In spite of the examples, it remains true that most new species, genera and families appear in the record suddenly (the Cambrian Explosion), and are not led up to by known, gradual, completely continuous transitional sequences.”
-George Gaylord Simpson-
05 Oct 05
2 edits
Originally posted by Bosse de NageMethinks there is less proof in the fossil record than people make out.
But what do you make of it?
There are two places in the world that have an abundance of Cambrian fossils: the Burgess Shale in the Canadian Rockies and the Chengjiang site in China.
In Stephen J. Gould's Wonderful Life, he points out that the Burgess Shale Cambrian fossils include "a range of disparity in anatomical design never again equaled, and not matched today by all the creatures in the world's oceans."
Further, these fossils contain some twenty to thirty kinds of arthropods that cannot be placed in any modern group. The modern arthropods, consisting of almost a million species, can all fit into four major groups. But "one quarry in British Columbia, representing the first explosion of multicellular life, reveals more than twenty additional arthropod designs." Today there are about 38 phyla in existence, but the Canadian, Chinese and other Cambrian sites reveal over fifty phyla.
There has been a decrease in diversity (probably due to global catastrophes). This is the reverse of what evolutionary theory predicts.
