Doesn't this go against the Darwinistic principles? Why do all of a sudden, so many new species begin to appear in such a short time?

The Cambrian explosion occurred early in the history of life on earth. There was much room for expansion and diversity. Most of the major groups of animals first appeared then. After a point a sort of equilibrium was reached though.

If you compress the entire 4.2 billion years of earth into 24 hours, the cambrian explosian lasts 1 minuet. Natural selection happens "slowly by accumulating slight, succesive, favrorable variations. No great or sudden modifications." In the cambrian explosion, Phyla appear rapidly in the fossil record, not gradually.

As I said, the conditions were different then. It was the beginning of life. There was much room for quick expansion in diversity. The evolution we observe now (after equilibrium) is slow and gradual (relatively).

But that doesn't fit Darwin's hypothesis.

It’s well worth checking this page before posting attacks on evolution as this is where most of us get our answers from.

Index to Creationist Claims

http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/list.html


Cambrian Explosion

http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CC/CC300.html

I'm just questioning, I don't mean to attack.

there are may possible reasons:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/evolution/library/03/4/l_034_02.html
http://www.peripatus.gen.nz/paleontology/CamExp.html

Just because it appears to happen quick in the fossil record doesn't mean it happens quickly in geologic time. For example, there is a pretty good chance that many life forms didn't leave a fossil record of note.

For example, there is a pretty good chance that many life forms didn't leave a fossil record of note.

Evidence?

Evidence?

Now that's just silly. How can you have evidence of lack of fossils? You're pushing it now.

Strange thing about that talkorigins site, it says that many phyla didn't originate in the cambrian explosion but Gould says that all but one did. "The Cambrian then began with an assemblage of bits and pieces, frustratingly difficult to interpret, called the "small shelly fauna." The subesequent main pulse, starting about 530 million years ago, constitutes the famous Cambrian explosion, during which all but one modern phylum of animal life made a first appearance in the fossil record. (Geologists had previously allowed up to 40 million years for this event, but an elegant study, published in 1993, clearly restricts this period of phyletic flowering to a mere five million years.) The Bryozoa, a group of sessile and colonial marine organisms, do not arise until the beginning of the subsequent, Ordovician period, but this apparent delay may be an artifact of failure to discover Cambrian representatives."* Now, just cause Gould says it doesn't necessarily make it so, but he is the evolution guru. ;) Don't know the details of this 1993 study, but it seems to have convinced Gould of the 5 million years; which by the way, is still a long time in my book.

I wonder about a site that makes claims specifically to refute certain creationist claims. It seems to be doing what the creationists are doing by taking specific things and just answering them. Possibly not even being ethical in the way it's doing it. I'd guess that many of the phyla's representative fossils are precursors or something and can possibly be called not of the phyla if you want to get technical.

I'd have to go with my favorite reason for the Cambrian Explosion as being the invention of teeth. Isn't this when the Anomalocaris developed? That thing they thought was originally a tail then it turns out that it was a grasping claw of predator? Things began eating each other and it became an arms race in many ways. I could be wrong about this. I'm no expert on the subject, just gathered bits and pieces down the line.

Another thing about the Cambrian Explosion (and the times before and after for that matter) is that there are many lines of evolution that went nowhere. And there is no clear reason why one line should advance while another line failed. It comes down to luck, I guess. And Natural Selection is not the only means by which evolution happens, only the most apparent in our time.

But, Enigma, it's not really ethical to search through the record and try to find the weak links to pick apart. You are a creationist and you are doing exactly what creationist's do. Creationism isn't a science it's a picking apart of what they don't want to believe in. And it's funny that you are so willing to compress this time down to the 1 minute scale. How old do you think the earth is? And what evidence do you have for that belief?

The Cambrian Explosion is a mystery. We have a long way to go to discovering the full mechanisms behind evolution. There are many theories and some are right some are wrong. But, evolution occurs. It can hardly be denied. The evidence is too overwhelming. You can not see the nose on your face if you want, but don't call it science by claiming that it's not there. And really, I don't see what you hope to achieve in so doing on this site. There's very few people here who don't see the truth in evolution. And you few are not going to alter their opinions on this matter because of creationist claims, they've heard it all before. And in all likelihood that great majority is not going to alter the few's opinion, because they must believe what they believe or imperil their faith.

*The Evolution of Life on Earth by Stephen Jay Gould, Scientific American Special Edition, Dinosaurs and Other Monsters.

Creatures to small and without a hard shell for example never got fossilized in quantities large enough for us to detect. Funny thing about fossil only a very small faction of animals living in specific regions gets fossilized, of those we have dug up a very small amount. Of course the fossil record is incomplete and I doubt it ever will be complete.

Evidence?

Well... Read inverts post because it's more thorough than this but here goes.

There is no evidence, and that's the point. The fossil record at it's very best is incomplete because not all life forms leave a record. By looking at the fossil record, you only see what is preserved not what was there. Lack of evidence does not indicate a lack of existence. If you truly are a creation science type, then surely you can understand this. An agnostic doesn't believe in God because they can't prove that one exists. And yet, many people have faith. Science and faith are very different things. Science sees evidence and then believes it to be true. Faith believes without needing to see the evidence. It is insulting to both to mix the two.

Actually, I didn't even mention the evidence of lack of fossils other than to call it silly. It's too self-evident that all life doesn't end up as a fossil to even comment on in my opinion. But, I probably would have anyway if I hadn't gone on the other tangents. It's funny that creationists will use lack of evidence as an argument against what they don't believe in and use it as an argument against those who doubt their faith. It's doublethink. The means you use to win an argument are only relevant for disputing whatever particular argument you are refuting at the time. If it convenient to ignore or even reverse your contention later, it is perfectly acceptable to them to do so. That's why picking on the small things is unethical. By so doing you split the argument up where the hypocrisies in your arguments aren't noticeable.

Bah! Creationism.

Apperently our knowledge on precambrian times has increased dramatically.

There seems to be a rather long period between the appearance fo the first eukaryotic cell and the first multicellular life.

In a way this is not very strange at all, because the genetic information was lacking for a long time to make multicellular life. But once the possibility arose, and the genetic plasticity was there is went fast.

One might also want to mention the ediacara fauna which predates the cambrian explosion but was most likely a failed experiment.

In fact Gould mentions that the 100 million years between from ediacara to burgess fauna might have given rise to 3 radically different faunas (ediacara, tommotian, modern fauna).

He also mentions that 20 percent of major groups are known exclusively by their presence in the three greatest paleozoic lagerstatten.

But, Enigma, it's not really ethical to search through the record and try to find the weak links to pick apart. You are a creationist and you are doing exactly what creationist's do. Creationism isn't a science it's a picking apart of what they don't want to believe in. And it's funny that you are so willing to compress this time down to the 1 minute scale. How old do you think the earth is? And what evidence do you have for that belief?

I am currently reading a pro-creation book and I just wanted to see how well the arguments actually stood up. I didn't use a 1 minuet scale, it was 24 hours, and I ment it to be an illustration/example. Personally, I believe the earth is 6,000; 10,000 max years old. My evidance is that
A. Red blood cells/hemoglobin have been found in dinosaur bones, and these
would not still exist if the dinosaurs lived 65 Ma ago. It breaks down in only a few thousand years time.
B. Radioactive decay releases helium into the atmosphere. Total helium in the atmophere today is 1/2000 of what it should be if the earth is billions of years old.
C. Evolutionists claim that the moon is 4.6 billion years old. the moon recedes from earth at a rate of 4cm a year, and this would be even greater in the past. To get to were the moon is today, the maximum time it would take to get there would be 1.37 billion years.
D. Oceans (http://icr.org/pubs/imp/imp-008.htm)

tell me if my facts are wrong:
(1)pre-cambrian= jellyfish, sponges, worms
(2)at the beginning of the cambrian, representatives of arthropods, echinoderms, and chordates apear.
(3)above mentioned 2 occured suddenly at the beginning of the cambrian
(4)contradicts Darwins tree of life due to the sudden appearance of fully developed creatures
(5)If in fact, Darwin's tree upside down

It's funny that creationists will use lack of evidence as an argument against what they don't believe in and use it as an argument against those who doubt their faith.

I think it's funny that evolutionists require creationists to set aside their presuppositions, but see it fully fair to use theirs. How about fitting facts to a theory and not theory to the facts.

Creatures to small and without a hard shell for example never got fossilized in quantities large enough for us to detect. Funny thing about fossil only a very small faction of animals living in specific regions gets fossilized, of those we have dug up a very small amount. Of course the fossil record is incomplete and I doubt it ever will be complete.

I agree that it will never be complete, but there have been soft-bodies organisms fossilized, even bacteria that have been dated to be 3 billion+ years old. Also, millions of fossils have already been discovered. There are plenty of sedimentary rocks from the pre-cambrian era to preseve ancestors of these organisms.

There is no evidence, and that's the point. The fossil record at it's very best is incomplete because not all life forms leave a record. By looking at the fossil record, you only see what is preserved not what was there. Lack of evidence does not indicate a lack of existence. If you truly are a creation science type, then surely you can understand this. An agnostic doesn't believe in God because they can't prove that one exists. And yet, many people have faith. Science and faith are very different things. Science sees evidence and then believes it to be true. Faith believes without needing to see the evidence. It is insulting to both to mix the two.

Except science supports my religion, at least from my perspective.

A. Red blood cells/hemoglobin have been found in dinosaur bones
That's pretty interesting... can you point me to the original paper describing this discovery?
B. Radioactive decay releases helium into the atmosphere.
Did you know that Earth's gravity isn't strong enough to hold onto Helium, so atmospheric Helium escapes into space? And that most Helium is released into underground deposits rather than directly to the atmosphere?
C. Evolutionists claim that the moon is 4.6 billion years old. the moon recedes from earth at a rate of 4cm a year, and this would be even greater in the past.
You might like to check your facts. Let me know if you need some help on finding sources.

But that doesn't fit Darwin's hypothesis.There's your first problem Enigma, Evolution no longer operates purely under Darwin's hypothesis. The science of Evolution has advanced quite a lot in the last 150 years. To argue against Darwin's original hypothesis is like arguing that there can be no intercontinental air travel because the Wright brothers only flew 120 feet. Creationist literature has a strong tendency to do this; it's basically a series of straw-man arguments.

~Raithere

tell me if my facts are wrong:
(1)pre-cambrian= jellyfish, sponges, worms


Yes your fact is wrong, pre-cambrianfauna consisted of the obscure and extinct ediacara and tommotian. I can already see where you go wrong here. You think that yellyfish, sponges and worms are primitive and hence must come first. First of all worms used a collective name for animals that looked like worms but couldn't be placed anywhere. Hence the term worm has no meaning because worms can be form rather different groups. Second of all, I can't be bothered to waste more time on this point.

(2)at the beginning of the cambrian, representatives of arthropods, echinoderms, and chordates apear.
(3)above mentioned 2 occured suddenly at the beginning of the cambrian


No, members of all the major groups appear and some that are now extinct. They appear in our sparse fossil record. That doesn't mean of course that they didn't exist before.

(4)contradicts Darwins tree of life due to the sudden


appearance of fully developed creatures[/QUOTE]
Not really. Why would it contradict the theory of evolution?


(5)If in fact, Darwin's tree upside down


Life is not a tree but more a bush.


so much for facts.

There's your first problem Enigma, Evolution no longer operates purely under Darwin's hypothesis. The science of Evolution has advanced quite a lot in the last 150 years. To argue against Darwin's original hypothesis is like arguing that there can be no intercontinental air travel because the Wright brothers only flew 120 feet. Creationist literature has a strong tendency to do this; it's basically a series of straw-man arguments.


Thanks for pointing this out. Can you give me a referance with the principles of modern Darwinism? Question: neoDarwinism= modern Darwinism?

Thanks for pointing this out. Can you give me a referance with the principles of modern Darwinism? Question: neoDarwinism= modern Darwinism?The primary change has been the discovery of DNA and the development of the various fields of Genetics. Neo-darwinism involved something of a division in the field between the Darwinian school and the Mendellian school. The division was largely mended. Modern Evolutionary theory centers around genetics and populations rather than individuals. It's a lot to cover, kind of like asking for an update in physics since Maxwell, and there are many fields (population gentics, molecular evolution, evolutionary biology, etc.) but here are some good links:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neo-Darwinism
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/evolution/library/06/index.html
http://www.palaeos.com/Evolution/evolution.htm

~Raithere

The vast majority of the bilge on the Cambrian explosion by Creationists is misguided. Lies include that the Cambrian wasthe FIRST appearance of complex life, that there are no transitionals fossils in the Cambrian, that it was 'sudden' (5 million years is not sudden), and that the animal and plant groups appeared together, fully formed. Also, that it contradicts the tree of life (Pre-Cambrian fossils strongly support the tree of life).

I don't want to be accused of lying, so here are my sources. http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CC/CC300.html


The Cambrian explosion was the seemingly sudden appearance of a variety of complex animals about 540 million years ago (Mya), but it was not the origin of complex life. Evidence of multicellular life from about 590 and 560 Mya appears in the Doushantuo Formation in China [Chen et al. 2000; 2004], and diverse fossil forms occurred before 555 Mya [Martin et al. 2000]. (The Cambrian began 543 Mya., and the Cambrian explosion is considered by many to start with the first trilobites, about 530 Mya.) There is evidence in the form of wormlike burrows in the Chorhat Sandstone in India of animals over a billion years ago [Seilacher et al. 1998] and trace-like fossils more than 1200 Mya in the Stirling Range Formation of Australia [Rasmussen et al. 2002]. Eukaryotes (which have relatively complex cells) may have arisen 2700 Mya, according to fossil chemical evidence . Fossil microorganisms have been found from 3465 Mya [Schopf 1993]. There is isotopic evidence of sulfur-reducing bacteria from 3470 Mya [Shen et al. 2001] and possible evidence of microbial etching of volcanic glass from 3480 Mya [Furnes et al. 2004].


[b] There are transitional fossils within the Cambrian explosion fossils. For example, there are lobopods (basically worms with legs) which are intermediate between arthropods and worms. [Conway Morris 1998]

Only some phyla appear in the Cambrian explosion. In particular, all plants post-date the Cambrian, and flowering plants, by far the dominant form of land life today, only appeared about 140 Mya .

Even among animals, not all types appear in the Cambrian. Cnidarians, sponges, and probably other phyla appeared before the Cambrian. Molecular evidence shows that at least six animal phyla are Precambrian [Wang et al. 1999]. Bryozoans appear first in the Ordovician. Many other soft-bodied phyla don't appear in the fossil record until much later. Although many new animal forms appeared during the Cambrian, not all did. According to one reference [Collins 1994], 11 of 32 metazoan phyla appear during the Cambrian, one appears Precambrian, 8 after the Cambrian, and 12 have no fossil record.

And that just considers phyla. Almost none of the animal groups that people think of as groups, such as mammals, reptiles, birds, insects, and spiders, appeared in the Cambrian. The fish that appeared in the Cambrian was unlike any fish alive today.

The length of the "Cambrian explosion" is ambiguous and uncertain, but 5-10 million years is a reasonable estimate; some say the "explosion" spans 40 million years or more, starting about 553 million years ago. Even the shortest estimate of 5 million years is hardly sudden.

There are some plausible explanations for why diversification may have been relatively sudden.

The evolution of active predators in the late Precambrian likely spurred the coevolution of hard parts on other animals. These hard parts fossilize much more easily than the previous soft-bodied animals, leading to many more fossils but not necessarily more animals.

Early complex animals may have been nearly microscopic. Apparent fossil animals smaller than 0.2 mm have been found in the Doushantuo Formation, China, 40 to 55 million years before the Cambrian [Chen et al. 2004]. Much early evolution could have simply been too small to see.

The earth was just coming out of a global ice age at the beginning of the Cambrian [Hoffman 1998; Kerr 2000]. A "snowball earth" before the Cambrian explosion may have hindered development of complexity or kept populations down to where fossils would have been too rare to expect to find today. The more favorable environment after the snowball earth would have opened new niches for life to have evolved into.

Hox genes, which control much of an animal's basic body plan, were likely first evolving around that time. Development of these genes might have just then allowed the raw materials for body plans to diversify [Carroll 1997].

Atmospheric oxygen may have increased at the start of the Cambrian [Canfield and Teske 1996; Thomas 1997; Logan et al. 1995].

Planktonic grazers began producing fecal pellets that fell to the bottom of the ocean rapidly, profoundly changing the ocean state, especially its oxygenation [Logan et al. 1995].

Unusual amounts of phosphate were deposited in shallow seas at the start of the Cambrian [Cook and Shergold 1986; Lipps and Signor 1992].

Cambrian life was still unlike almost everything alive today. Using number of cell types as a measure of complexity, complexity has been increasing more-or-less constantly since the beginning of the Cambrian [Valentine et al. 1994].

Major radiations of life forms have occurred at other times, too. One of the most extensive diversifications of life occurred in the Ordovician, for example [Miller 1997].

http://wiki.cotch.net/wiki.phtml?title=Cambrian_explosion_contradicts_ev olutionary_tree_pattern&printable=yes


[b] The Cambrian explosion does not show all groups appearing together fully formed, but some animal groups (and no plant, fungus, or microbe groups) appearing over many millions of years in forms very different, for the most part, from the forms that are seen today.

The Cambrian was the first appearance of hard parts, such as shells and teeth, in animals. The lack of readily fossilizable parts before then ensures that the fossil record would be very incomplete in the Precambrian. The old age of the Precambrian era contributes to a scarcity of fossils.

The Precambrian fossils which have been found are consistent with a branching pattern and inconsistent with a sudden Cambrian origin. For example, bacteria appear well before multicellular organisms, and there fossils giving evidence of transitionals leading to halkierids and arthropods.
Genetic evidence also shows a branching pattern in the Precambrian, indicating, for example, that plants diverged from a common ancestor before fungi diverged from animals.