Cambrian Exploding With More Discoveries

One of the most fundamental things we learn regarding Darwinism is this...”Evolution is not free to make anything, it makes things that work by gradual steps…That is a finite set of options.” says a blogger in response to a previous post.  Nature doesn’t agree!

For example, a Cambrian arthropod that was recently discovered in China, had a complex brain! The imprint was so well-preserved that scientists were able to trace the neural pathways from the brain all the way to the eye stalks! This discovery defies evolutionary thinking  of “making things work by gradual steps (from simple to complex).

Evolutionists begin to ask, “why would nature create an advanced brain anatomy with a primitive body plan?” So you have this animal with a very simple body structure with a modern brain! Even though Stausfeld, a neurobiologist at the University of Arizona believes this fossil ‘evolved’ his explanation goes against evolutionary expectations…

“The fossil supports the idea that once a basic brain design had evolved, it changed little over time, he explained. Instead, peripheral components such as the eyes, the antennae and other appendages, sensory organs, etc., underwent great diversification and specialized in different tasks but all plugged into the same basic circuitry.”

“It is remarkable how constant the ground pattern of the nervous system has remained for probably more than 550 million years,” Strausfeld added. “The basic organization of the computational circuitry that deals, say, with smelling, appears to be the same as the one that deals with vision, or mechanical sensation.”

Not only is this fossil falsifying “gradual steps” but has evolutionists suggesting that evolution goes backwards! In the story of evolution, insects evolved from simpler-brained branchiopods.

Science daily…

“Because the brain anatomy of branchiopods is much simpler than that of malacostracans, they have been regarded as the more likely ancestors of the arthropod lineage that would give rise to insects.

However, the discovery of a complex brain anatomy in an otherwise primitive organism such as Fuxianhuia makes this scenario unlikely. “The shape [of the fossilized brain] matches that of a comparable sized modern malacostracan,” the authors write in Nature. They argue the fossil supports the hypothesis that branchiopod brains evolved from a previously complex to a more simple architecture instead of the other way around.”

Stausfeld, a Londoner and two Chinese colleagues their paper in nature admitted to branchiopods under going “evolutionary reduction” in brain structure rather than a step by step increase that is normally expected! Why would such a reduction have to occur, wouldn’t have been better (or more fit) to have the brain remain complex and evolve it more from there?

Does this shed more understanding on how evolutionary expectations don’t work when observing nature, oops I mean work? One hears this a lot when evolution is falsified.

Graham E. Budd says this in nature…

“Even to palaeontologists, the fossil record can resemble the chaotic attic of an eccentric relative, stacked with ancient bric-a-brac of dubious usefulness. But the record has recently been throwing up some surprises that are bringing new order to this jumble. Our concept of dinosaurs, for example, has evolved from what were essentially bolted-together lumps of bone into living creatures covered in graceful feathers — and in colour too. Other fossil finds have brought changes to the scale of our understanding of evolution.”

“For example, the discovery of exceptionally well-preserved fossil muscle fibres throughout the record and fossilized embryos from at least the Cambrian period, some 500 million years ago, have provided remarkable insight into the fine-scale evolution of these tissues and life stages. Now, on page 258 of this issue, Ma and colleagues describe preserved nervous tissue from the Cambrian — a find that grants palaeontologists access to the exclusive zoological club of those who study the brain and nervous system.”

When a “theory” increases in complexity as a result of falsifications which happens a lot in evolution, it doesn’t hold up in explaining the realities of nature! How these complex muscle fibers and embryos from the earliest parts of the record could provide such “insight” into evolution was left unexplained.

The Cambrian shows an abrupt appearance of all the animal body plans  along with complex brains but no transitional forms.  Transitional forms should out number the species themselves in the fossil record! From there, diversification and simplification occurs according to built-in variability and adaptation mechanisms, but the original complex designs endure! This is my friend what you call, evidence that confirms creationism!

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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!

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!

How The Cambrian Explosion Has Been Amazing

Darwin considered the Cambrian fossils to be a problem for evolution because of their sudden appearance of complexity rather than slow and gradual.  One of which that could disprove evolution entirely. But it was widely believed that eventually answers would come with future science which is a common theme in various explanations of evolution. Well, with future science many more Cambrian fossils have been discovered!

And has it answered questions that plagued Darwin? No! There are attempted explanations of the data (like hyper-evolution) but the pattern of sudden appearance of complex remains.  Animals that have complex digestive systems, eyes, and nervous systems. Precambrian fossils were thought to be the answer to the problem, but the ones discovered there so far have no relationships with animals.

In the Deadwood Formation where it was thought to have formed very slowly, a group of scientists from different countries had discovered exquisitely-preserved crustaceans which they said had a ” surprisingly modern aspect” in the mudstone!

PNAS described it this way…

“The early history of crustaceans is obscured by strong biases in fossil preservation, but a previously overlooked taphonomic mode yields important complementary insights. Here we describe diverse crustacean appendages of Middle and Late Cambrian age from shallow marine mudstones of the Deadwood Formation in western Canada. The fossils occur as flattened and fragmentary carbonaceous cuticles but provide a suite of phylogenetic and ecological data by virtue of their detailed preservation. In addition to an unprecedented range of complex, largely articulated filtering limbs, we identify at least four distinct types of mandible.”

“Together, these fossils provide the earliest evidence for crown-group branchiopods and total-group copepods and ostracods, extending the respective ranges of these clades back from the Devonian, Pennsylvanian, and Ordovician. Detailed similarities with living forms demonstrate the early origins and subsequent conservation of various complex food-handling adaptations, including a directional mandibular asymmetry that has persisted through half a billion years of evolution.”

“At the same time, the Deadwood fossils indicate profound secular changes in crustacean ecology in terms of body size and environmental distribution. The earliest radiation of crustaceans is largely cryptic in the fossil record, but “small carbonaceous fossils” reveal organisms of surprisingly modern aspect operating in an unfamiliar biosphere.”

There were other crustaceans that had been discovered in the Cambrian. Since the fossil record disagrees with the evolutionary timeline of slow and gradual, these scientists pushed back the timeline for example, branchiopods were pushed back 80-100 million years. With the problem of complexity so early in the fossil record, these scientist tried their best to explain differences between modern ones but nevertheless, “direct evidence for sophisticated particle-handling” and represent “the acme of Cambrian differentiation within appendages…” 

In order to reconcile fossil copepods which are larger than modern ones. They suggested that there was a presence of fish with predatory eyes which drove the crustacean size down.  But perhaps they overlooked something, fish fossils were discovered by the Chinese back in 2002-03,  in the early Cambrian!

There biggest problem with these amazing fossils of animals is the fact that with all those complex body parts represented in an early part of the fossil record is how a gradual, unguided evolutionary process would lead to such complex levels of function in such a short period of time, abruptly, with no fossil pathway on how it got there, much earlier than expected.

In a more recent discovery, a new species of filter-feeding marine animal that resembles a tulip was discovered on Mt. Stephen in British Columbia.

Phys.org describes this way…

“Officially named Siphusauctum gregarium, fossils reveal a tulip-shaped creature that is about the length of a dinner knife (approximately 20 centimetres or eight inches) and has a unique filter feeding system.”

“Siphusauctum has a long stem, with a calyx – a bulbous cup-like structure – near the top which encloses an unusual filter feeding system and a gut. The animal is thought to have fed by filtering particles from water actively pumped into its calyx through small holes. The stem ends with a small disc which anchored the animal to the seafloor. Siphusauctum lived in large clusters, as indicated by slabs containing over 65 individual specimens.”

This amazing fully-formed animal, which includes a gut, foot anchor and pump to drive water through its complex and “unusual filter-feeding system” implies a very short time period between the Precambrian and its abrupt appearance.

This is why the Cambrian explosion has been and will continue to be quite amazing. Its data confirms creationism, while evolution the data continues to make predictions and expectations on what the explanation of evolution  is supposed to do rather than the other way around which generally is common with “theories” in science.

“Organs Of Extreme Perfection” Discovered In Cambrian

Wow, that is one word which describes this incredible find in the Early Cambrian! Some think that the fossil record somehow proves evolution. Most of us who went to school have seen a diagram of the geologic column presented to us as we learned about the story of evolution. It displays smooth progressions over millions of years, and does give you the impression that fossils are always discovered in the same definite order with no problems fossils ever being discovered ‘in the wrong place’.

This latest discovery is quite remarkable. Trilobite eyes found in the Cambrian were already astonishing and surprisingly complex due to the fact on where it was found, and now complex eyes with amazingly designed modern optics from an unknown arthropod was discovered!

In Nature…

“Despite the status of the eye as an “organ of extreme perfection”, theory suggests that complex eyes can evolve very rapidly. The fossil record has, until now, been inadequate in providing insight into the early evolution of eyes during the initial radiation of many animal groups known as the Cambrian explosion.

This is surprising because Cambrian Burgess-Shale-type deposits are replete with exquisitely preserved animals, especially arthropods, that possess eyes. However, with the exception of biomineralized trilobite eyes, virtually nothing is known about the details of their optical design. Here we report exceptionally preserved fossil eyes from the Early Cambrian (~515 million years ago) Emu Bay Shale of South Australia, revealing that some of the earliest arthropods possessed highly advanced compound eyes, each with over 3,000 large ommatidial lenses and a specialized ‘bright zone’.

These are the oldest non-biomineralized eyes known in such detail, with preservation quality exceeding that found in the Burgess Shale and Chengjiang deposits. Non-biomineralized eyes of similar complexity are otherwise unknown until about 85 million years later. The arrangement and size of the lenses indicate that these eyes belonged to an active predator that was capable of seeing in low light.

The eyes are more complex than those known from contemporaneous trilobites and are as advanced as those of many living forms. They provide further evidence that the Cambrian explosion involved rapid innovation in fine-scale anatomy as well as gross morphology, and are consistent with the concept that the development of advanced vision helped to drive this great evolutionary event.”

Let me begin by asking a few important questions, How does a sudden appearance in the fossil record that has a complex trait like vision could “drive” an evolutionary event? Where are the transitional eyes in the fossil record that are simpler than these which were recently discovered? Was evolution so fast nobody could see the transitional eyes in the fossil record? While the authors invent more stuff into the story of evolution due to another falsification, the evidence points to more complexity and adaptive perfection than was thought possible for animals this early!

There are a number of things to take note of, first, let’s do a science experiment by taking a look at a side-by-side comparison of the fossil imprint with a living insect eye, and one notices that it’s virtually no difference in complexity!  “The extremely regular arrangement of lenses seen here exceeds even that in certain modern taxa, such as the horseshoe crab,” the authors point out. The eyes were designed advanced enough to give the owner binocular vision!

What is even more amazing is this admission, “The arrangement and size gradient of lenses creates a distinct ‘bright zone’ (also called the acute zone or fovea), where the visual field is sampled with higher light sensitivity (due to large ommatidia) and possibly a higher acuity (due to what seems to be a more parallel orientation of ommatidia),” they said.  “Such visual specializations, characteristic of many modern taxa, are otherwise unknown in the Early Cambrian.”

The authors even used the term, “explosion” in their conclusion but with the story of evolution without any evidence of in the fossil record that contain transitional forms of this newly discovered animal. Also, one cannot call this a “trigger” of the Cambrian explosion! It would be like saying, a rocket appeared abruptly which then triggered a trip to the moon! Talk about completely and utterly nonsense! By the way, evolutionists for years have been trying to refute, the Cambrian explosion , claiming it wasn’t really an explosion (another illusion) but here we find authors who most likely dislike creationism or intelligent design, using the term “explosion” a number of times in their paper!

So they find these “organs of extreme perfection” in the early Cambrian with no transitions just giving the public a story about how stuff just happens in evolution. But Christians ought to rejoice in such a discovery and feel blessed, it clearly reveals a Creator, one with an amazing mindset that goes well beyond our understanding that we can learn from and also confirms this as His creation not some mindless process of errors!

Geologists Tinker With The Cambrian Explosion Data

One of the most extensive defenses of Darwinian evolution against the Cambrian explosion (the lowest layers of fossil-bearing strata) since Charles Marshall’s attempt to explain it back in 2006 where he writes…

“The Cambrian “explosion,” or radiation, is perhaps the most significant evolutionary transition seen in the fossil record.  Essentially all of the readily fossilizable animal body plans first appear in the fossil record during this interval (Valentine 2002).  We move from the depths of the Precambrian world, where the sedimentary record is essentially devoid of animal fossils, to the Phanerozoic, where animal life leaves pervasive evidence of its existence, both as body fossils and as disturbers of the sediment.”

“Numerous explanations for the Cambrian “explosion” have been posited (note here that I am not considering here in any detail explanations for the precursor to the Cambrian “explosion,” the Ediacaran radiation).  Classification of this rich panoply of explanations is somewhat arbitrary but typically explanations center on one of the following factors: (a) changes in the abiotic environment, (b) changes in the genetic or developmental capacity of the taxa involved, or (c) changes in the biotic environment, i.e., in ecology.”

“All of these factors must have played a role, but how important was each?  To what extent did the Cambrian “explosion” flow from an interaction between them?  How might we develop a conceptual framework for understanding that interaction?  Developing a coherent explanation for the Cambrian “explosion” faces several challenges….”

The Cambrian has been a thorn in evolution because it falsifies Darwinian claims about a slow gradual process and evolutionary scientists for years have been working on trying to explain away the sudden appearances of fully structured and complex animals found in the lower strata. Since fossils cannot be revised observationally, tinkering with the time line and simplifying was the focus of this recent paper…

“He writes “[w]e should not forget that only a small portion of the world is known with accuracy” (Darwin, 1859, p. 307).  It is this explanation—the incompleteness of our knowledge—that has turned out to be closer to the truth.  The problem of missing fossil ancestors was solved by the discovery of the Precambrian fossil record, the problem that nearly all the animal phyla appear in the Lower Cambrian with no evidence of intermediate taxa was solved by the recognition that most Lower Cambrian fossils represent stem-groups of living phyla, and the problem of the explosive diversification of animals at the start of the Tommotian was solved by improved correlation and radiometric dating of Lower Cambrian sequences—to which we contribute here—showing that this diversification was drawn out over more than 20 m.y.”

Radiometric dating with comparisons of calcium carbonate isotopes in fossil shells were used to determine a new time line. By expanding the time line it would quiet down the explosion in the Cambrian period. So geologists from Princeton, MIT, UC Santa Barbara, and Washington University made their assumptions with calcium carbonate isotopes which they argued changes ocean chemistry and thus gave us the appearance of an explosion.

What is even more interesting, they resort in making a fraudulent claim which is very misleading to the public.  “The problem of missing fossil ancestors was solved by the discovery of the Precambrian fossil record…” Some may also see this as a bluff of what hand they really have. You see, in the introduction of the paper, it was a different story…

“Despite abundant evidence for a variety of life extending back to at least 3.5 Ga, Precambrian fossils mostly record the evolution of bacteria and microbial eukaryotes.  The earliest evidence for animals predates the Precambrian-Cambrian boundary by only ~100 m.y.  (Xiao et al., 1998; Yin et al., 2007; Love et al., 2009, Maloof et al., 2010b), and the few unquestioned examples of Precambrian Bilateria are <15 m.y. older than the beginning of the Cambrian (Fedonkin and Waggoner, 1997; Martin et al., 2000; Jensen, 2003; Droser et al., 2005).”

“Significant increases in trace fossil diversity and complexity across the boundary and the absence of soft-bodied animals in upper Precambrian Burgess Shale–type biotas (Xiao et al., 2002) suggest that the general absence of bilaterian animal fossils from upper Precambrian rocks is not a preservational artifact.  Rather, it appears that animals originated and began to diversify relatively close to the base of the Cambrian.”

What is omitted in this paper? Charles Marshall also had problems with it too in his explanation. It’s intermediate forms, the transitional forms that must have existed between all the phyla. The Precambrian fossils consists mostly of bacteria and microbial eukaryotes! Then all of a sudden it jumps to higher levels of life for example, Trilobites, show up at about 525 million years in the evolutionary time frame but no pre-trilobites have ever been found. Scientists are not observing microbes becoming cnidarians, or Ediacarans becoming worms in the fossil record!

It is assumed that since bacteria and eukaryotes are found in Precambrian fossils, that Trilobites and other animals had evolved. Does this solve the Cambrian Explosion and proves a slow and gradual process? Is this really their best evidence so far? The fact of the matter is, if evolution were true there would be intermediate forms in the fossil record. Also, there would be more intermediate forms than the species themselves. These geologists didn’t explain the Cambrian explosion away, all they did was tinker with the data which deals only with fully complex structured species, revise the time line which is a common practice in evolution because it’s based on assumptions and then made a fraudulent claim (because it has to do with creationism and intelligent design proponents) that wasn’t based on an observation in the fossil record.