Soft Animal Discovered During The Cambrian Explosion

Lobopods resemble something like a velvet worm which means these worms have legs.  A pretty remarkable discovery, the Lobopod fossil was found in the midwest, namely in Illinois. Previously these animals were discovered in places like the Burgess Shale in Canada and also in Sweden.

There has been some confusion about the worms in terms of where they fit in the evolutionary tree (taxonomy). Evolutionists have narrowed it down to ancestors of arthropods or related to modern water bears. The discovery was a surprise to Paleontologists who thought these animals had died out in the middle Cambrian, but recently, an exquisitely-preserved fossil has been discovered in Carboniferous rock in Illinois!

In Current Biology…

“Lobopodians, a nonmonophyletic assemblage of worm-shaped soft-bodied animals most closely related to arthropods, show two major morphotypes: long-legged and short-legged forms.”

“The morphotype with stubby, conical legs has a long evolutionary history, from the early Cambrian through the Carboniferous, including the living onychophorans and tardigrades. Species with tubular lobopods exceeding the body diameter have been reported exclusively from the Cambrian; the three-dimensionally preserved Orstenotubulus evamuellerae from the uppermost middle Cambrian “Orsten” (Sweden) is the youngest long-legged lobopodian reported thus far.”

“Here we describe a new long-legged lobopodian, Carbotubulus waloszeki gen. et sp. nov., from Mazon Creek, Illinois, USA (∼296 million years ago). This first post-Cambrian long-legged lobopodian extends the range of this morphotype by about 200 million years. The three-dimensionally preserved specimen differs significantly from the associated short-legged form Ilyodes inopinata, of which we also present new head details.”

“The discovery of a Carboniferous long-legged lobopodian provides a more striking example of the long-term survival of Cambrian morphotypes than, for example, the occurrence of a Burgess Shale-type biota in the Ordovician of Morocco and dampens the effect of any major extinction of taxa at the end of the middle Cambrian.”

No doubt, this remarkable find has increased the complexity (caused a problem) within the framework of evolution. For instance, with the stories of mass extinctions of other animals, this one did fine for supposedly 200 million years without changing.

Of course, the exquisite preservation found with the fossilized details of soft tissues challenges beliefs (in evolution) that these animals lasted nearly 300 million years with all the geologic and climatic changes that supposedly went on during all those years! However, the exquisite preservation of soft tissues does in fact confirm the creationist time frame of a young earth!

And finally, another remarkable thing about this fossil discovery is that the fact that the animal was found in the midwest,  which were known to be in Sweden and Canada, shows its wide ”range extension” of these tiny creatures!

So these multicellular animals with coordinated legs, bilateral symmetry, a gut, and behavior suited for their life were unchanged, no evolution! And their delicate, little soft-bodied animals that did just wonderful for 200 million years in evolutionary time while other animals were having mass exits from the world along with geological and climate changes in the story of evolution.

Increased complexity in a theory is not confirmation, this discovery of a fossil demonstrates in part, that the story of evolution is not true!

Discovery of ‘Feathers’ On Dinosaur Rises Questions

There is a pattern emerging about this latest and surprising discovery which will be discussed in a moment. Most of these discoveries come from either Germany or China, and often times involve the same fossil-hunters, and often times come from private collectors!

Giving the name, Sciurumimus which was discovered in Germany in the hands of a private collector which means “squirrel-mimic.” The fossil is a juvenile in a typical “dinosaur death pose” found globally in other places which creationists believe suggests a rapid suffocation in  water caused by a global flood.

Why all the fuss over Sciurumimus? Here is what they say in Nature News…

“Palaeontologist Paul Barrett of London’s Natural History Museum agrees that the structures on Sciurumimus are probably protofeathers. Although additional geochemical work is needed to study the features’ details, Barrett says, the fossilized wisps are very similar to the fuzz seen on other dinosaurs.”

“But he notes that the presence of these filaments among all dinosaurs is “speculation”. Feathery structures might be a common feature of dinosaurs, but it’s also possible that they evolved multiple times.”

“We need more examples in both non-coelurosaurian theropods, and particularly in the other big dinosaur groups, before we can really speculate that these features are a character of dinosaurs as a whole,” Barrett says.”

Nature News dubs this discovery as having “protofeathers” but one would be looking in vain to find feathers with barbs and barbules as found in birds! You see, type 1 protofeathers are also found on you, horses, dogs, cats, and other animals who have hair!

Science Daily calls it a surprising find…

“This is a surprising find from the cradle of feathered dinosaur work, the very formation where the first feathered dinosaur Archaeopteryx was collected over 150 years ago,” said Mark Norell, chair of the Division of Palaeontology at the American Museum of Natural History and an author on the new paper along with researchers from Bayerische Staatssammlung für Paläontologie und Geologie and the Ludwig Maximilians University.”

One of the reasons for the surprise is that the fossil appears in the same limestone in northern Bavaria as Archaeopteryx  which was discovered 150 years ago, that was fully fledged with flight feathers: meaning, at the very least, that this creature and birds with powered flight were already contemporaries. This rises questions and causes additional complexity in the evolutionary story.

“Repeat evolution” is being invoked in order to connect this dinosaur with evolving feathers that can be eventually used for flight within in future  creatures, but not all are sold on the idea that this dinosaur is related to birds.

This rising another question, if a fossil was found exquisitely preserved and its tail was clearly seen but none of the internal organs were not observable, would you then postulate that dogs were evolving flight?

There are complications with this discovery if one attempts to connect it with evolving flight…The  “protofeathers” are on the wrong animals! Their dates overlap, or belong in the wrong eras.  The discoveries do not demonstrate a  progression in complexity over time till true powered flight is thought to have evolved.  They are either simple protrusions, or complex feathers found on animals that clearly used them for flying or gliding or perhaps were even secondarily flightless!

Cambrian Explosion: “Then Something Happened”

Without any transitional life forms that show small changes increasing complexity over long periods of time, in a relative blink of an eye, we see complexity of animals appear out of nowhere in the geological column. Paleontologists continue to discover new varieties of animals for example in 2010, eight new kinds of creatures have been discovered in the Cambrian rocks.

Interesting to note, the newly discovered fossils back in 2010, consisted of soft parts like eyes and gills on creatures which are alleged to be a half a billion years old in the evolutionary time frame. But the soft parts found in the rock is an indication that the fossils are much younger. The Cambrian Explosion has baffled many evolutionary scientists who are now seeking some sort of explanation on why these fossils fall way short of evolutionary expectations.

A press release by the University of Wisconsin-Madison (also found in science daily and phys.org)  states the following over this incredible phenomena…

“The oceans teemed with life 600 million years ago, but the simple, soft-bodied creatures would have been hardly recognizable as the ancestors of nearly all animals on Earth today. Then something happened. Over several tens of millions of years – a relative blink of an eye in geologic terms – a burst of evolution led to a flurry of diversification and increasing complexity, including the expansion of multicellular organisms and the appearance of the first shells and skeletons.”

Is the “second geological curiosity” going to be able to solve the first mystery or will there be more? The paper published in Nature, contains various charts, data references, and so on. One must determine if these are nothing more than props which really doesn’t solve any mystery or the real deal.  Research papers are often times hyped up in press releases to show importance for reasons like funding purposes or showcase talent or attempting to sway public opinion or any combination of those three.

Drs. Peters and Gaines confined their research to the Darwinian framework and history along with the assumed evolutionary geological timescale.

“Although Darwin and other palaeontologists [sic; Darwin’s only degree was in theology] have regarded the resultant widespread hiatus in the rock record as a failure of preservation, the formation of this prominent gap may have actually been an environmental trigger for biomineralization, thereby promoting the Cambrian explosion of marine animals.  Determining the geodynamic causes of extensive Neoproterozoic continental denudation followed by Phanerozoic sedimentation, and linking those dynamics to the timing and spatial distribution of marine transgression and biogeochemical change, is now a challenge for geoscience.”

This is why evolutionary research is way out there in left field somewhere, we see them using the “gaps” as “data” without explaining a geodynamic cause to it, nor an explanation of a cause for subsequent sedimentation that includes complex Cambrian animals which are fully formed with no transitional forms preceding them! Then we see them pass off the assumption of  imaginary geological processes with their invented imagination of  biogeochemical changes that brought trilobites out of new seawater chemistry to someone else’s future research calling it a “challenge for geoscience.” 

So what has the public and scientists learned from this paper? A great mystery that Charles Darwin called a huge gap in the fossil record but this huge gap they say is no longer a problem rather in this new study they call it the solution (using reverse psychology to make their research sound more relevant). Wait a minute! Didn’t the research paper propose a scientific explanation to the Cambrian explosion based on facts?

Here is what they actually proposed…

“During the early Cambrian, shallow seas repeatedly advanced and retreated across the North American continent, gradually eroding away surface rock to uncover fresh basement rock from within the crust. Exposed to the surface environment for the first time, those crustal rocks reacted with air and water in a chemical weathering process that released ions such as calcium, iron, potassium, and silica into the oceans, changing the seawater chemistry.”

Doesn’t that sound scientific? No! On the surface it gives the illusion of being scientific, but what they are doing is filling a gap in with their own imagination (then something happened), there was no evidence to suggest that shallow seas somehow and repeatedly advanced and retreated, wearing down sediments to basement rock all over the world! Where was the gully erosion on a global flat surface as a result of that happening or how would they know which new minerals would spring out having the ability to cause evolution to burst out? Was there a lab test about this?

So here we are told that new minerals sprang into existence somehow and then supposedly changed the chemistry of seawater where it supposedly caused an explosion of specialized complexity and diversity among the animals. This is what evolutionary scientists call the “Great Unconformity.”  Using one’s imagination to fill in the gaps and call it a greater understanding is nowhere near scientific. The press release along with the research did the public a disservice rather than a service.  Science entails a lot more than creating a man-made story.

The Cambrian explosion confirms the Biblical account of creation which says a global flood occurred. Using a global flood model, it is plausible that the flood had generated enormous tsunamis that swept ocean-floor sediments landwards, catastrophically burying progressively the organisms then living in nearshore, coastal and land environments.  Thus the Cambrian layers contain the fossils of the large variety of animals including unusual pre-Flood creatures that are now extinct like the seven-foot shrimp.

Modern geologists observe that most new sediment layers are deposited rapidly in catastrophic events but since Darwinism is invoked, it is  causing an array of complexities within its own mysteries. On the other hand, the Grand Canyon was carved by water and one can draw reasonable conclusions from that. In the flood model there is something real and observable to point to, in the evolutionary explanation of the Cambrian Explosion, there is nothing to point as previously mentioned, where is the gully erosion on a global flat surface as a result of that happening? And then point to other unobservable ideas which state, then something happened and fill it in with more ideas that were not observed.  The Cambrian Explosion isn’t just something that happened, it is a confirmation of God’s creation which can be seen today!

The Mystery of Fossilized Whales In A Desert

Paleontologists were filled with enormous excitement and joy when 80 whales were discovered in the Chile desert.  They deemed it to be quite unusual and rare. Chilean paleontologist Mario Suarez on the excavation, said the mammals died more or less around the same time, then continued with his own spin on history with others coming up with their own while claiming the whales died 2 million to 7 million years ago.

A question was asked, “how did all these whales get fossilized in a desert about a half mile from the ocean?” The problem with evolutionists in trying to answer such a question comes from their rejection of considering a global flood. The discovery of whale fossils being buried in a desert also makes the story about evolution more complex. Other reports suggested that the state the earth’s coastlines were much lower back then. So which is it? The earth’s coastlines cannot be both in the story of evolution. But that certainly could happen to the coastlines with a global flood which explains where the whales lay!  This incredible find is quite remarkable for Christians as it confirms the Biblical account of Noah’s Flood!

When the earth was covered with water, the whales where able swim to this location, but when the water receded as a result of the raising of the continents where the floodwaters flowed into the ocean, they got trapped and thus a rapid burial took place. This same occurrence was responsible for sea shells being deposited at elevations that are much too high for ocean life to ever had existed accept that a flood deposited them! Just like in another location in South America, not far from Chile where fossils like a completely articulated  whale, except for one missing flipper, and a damage front skull with bones being incredibly preserved in a place where ocean life could not have existed!

The evidence for a large-scale catastrophe is overwhelmingly strong as some research scientists have reported. Since creation scientists and non-scientists take the global flood as an plausible event that happened, conclusion consist of the fossil layers to have been deposited mostly during this event. Most biblical geologists accept that the standard geological column represents the general order of deposition during the Flood, with some of the uppermost parts of the column being deposited in the 4,300-year period afterwards. The mystery created by evolutionists is not really a mystery after all but rather an amazing event that confirms the Bible!