Evolution or Creation?
The Cambrian Explosion
Nearly all animal phyla* made their first appearance in the fossil record at essentially the same time, an interval of some 5 million years [ET**] (about 525 to 530 million years ago [ET**]) called the "Cambrian Explosion."[64]
Scientists have found that these early fossils exhibit more anatomical body designs than exist today, and that early animals, the trilobites, had eyes as fully developed as their counterparts today.[42]
Many of the Cambrian fauna, still survive today, all looking much like they did over 500 million [ET**] years ago. The prominent British evolutionist, Richard Dawkins, comments, "... [W]e find many of them already in an advanced state of evolution, the very first time they appear. It is as though they were just planted there, without any evolutionary history."[64]
Two places in the world that have an abundance of early (Cambrian) fossils; the Burgess Shale in the Canadian Rockies and the Chengjiang site in China.[42]
In Stephen J. Gould's popular book, 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."[42]
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.[42]
There has been a decrease in diversity (probably due to global catastrophes). This is the reverse of what evolutionary theory predicts.[42]
Besides diversity, the Burgess Shale shows exquisite detail, right down to "the last filament of a trilobite's gill," or the last meal in a worm's gut.[42]
The Chengjiang site has even greater detail, and is earlier. According to Paul Chien, the chairman of the biology department at the University of San Francisco, said the preservation is such that internal organs, nerves, and even the water ducts of jellyfish are observable.[42]
Researchers found striking similarities between the compound eyes of the Cambrian trilobites and those of modern insects. According to Riccardo Levi-Setti, "Trilobites could see in their immediate environment with amazingly sophisticated optical devices in the form of large composite eyes. ... The number of individual optical elements in the compound eye could vary from approximately one hundred to more than fifteen thousand in a single eye, a range not very different from that found in modern insects."[42]
The conclusion is that the eye, a complex visual system, was fully formed and functional extremely early in the fossil record. Obviously, this is not predicted by evolutionary theory.[42]
Until recently, the phylum of vertebrates had been considered a later arrival in evolutionary history. But not now! Even the vertebrate phylum now extends into the Cambrian period, especially with the recent discovery of two fossil fish in China.[64]
The two new fossils . . . from Chengjiang are the most convincing Early Cambrian vertebrates ever found. The insects and other land invertebrates are also a very important group, and these practically all seem to be living fossils.[64]
These complex animals were present at the beginning of multicellular life and did not appear later as is predicted by evolutionary theory.[42]
Evolution does not explain the abrupt appearance of complex forms of life early in the fossil record or these fossils' unequaled diversity. The implication of the Cambrian explosion of diverse, fully functional, and multicellular life is that evolutionary theory is falsified.[42]
Life did not start out simple and evolve into more complex and diverse animals; it was complex and diverse right at the beginning. This contradiction between the fossil data and the predictions of evolutionary theory falsifies the theory.[42]
"The facts of paleontology seem to support creation rather than evolution. All the major groups of invertebrates appear suddenly in the first fossiliferous strata. (Cambrian) of the earth with their distinct specializations, indicating that they were all created at almost the same time." - David Enock Associate Professor of Biology. BS Yeshiva College, MS Hunter College[86]
Even George Gaylord Simpson, Harvard high priest of evolution had to admit, “In spite of the examples, it remains true (as every paleontologist knows) that most new species, genera and families appear in the record suddenly, and are not led up to by known, gradual, completely continuous transitional sequences.”[86]
* A major group based on shared features into which animals are divided, made up of several classes.
** Evolutionary time scale.
*** An animal with jointed limbs and a segmented body, such as a spider.