In the famed Cambrian explosion most of today’s animal phyla appeared abruptly in the geological strata. How could a process driven by blind, random mutations produce such a plethora of new species? Evolutionist Steve Jones, in his book  Darwin’s Ghost (2000), has speculated that the Cambrian explosion was caused by some crucial change in DNA. “Might a great burst of genetic creativity have driven a Cambrian Genesis and given birth to the modern world?” (p. 206)

What explanations such as this do not address is the problem of how evolution overcame such astronomical entropic barriers. Rolling a dice, no matter how creatively, is not going to design a spaceship.

The Cambrian explosion is not the only example of the abrupt appearance of new forms in the fossil record, and the other examples are no less easy for evolution to explain. Nor has the old saw, that it’s the fossil record’s fault, fared well. There was once a time when evolutionists could appeal to gaps in the fossil record to explain why the species appear to arise abruptly, but no more. There has just been too much paleontology work, such as a new international study on dinosaurs published this week, confirming exactly what the strata have been showing all along: new forms really did arise abruptly.

The new study narrows the dating of the rise of dinosaurs in the fossil record. It confirms that many dinosaur species appeared in an “explosion” or what “we term the ‘dinosaur diversification event (DDE)’.” It was an “explosive increase in dinosaurian abundance in terrestrial ecosystems” (emphasis added). As the press release explains:

First there were no dinosaur tracks, and then there were many. This marks the moment of their explosion, and the rock successions in the Dolomites are well dated. Comparison with rock successions in Argentina and Brazil, here the first extensive skeletons of dinosaurs occur, show the explosion happened at the same time there as well.

As lead author Dr. Massimo Bernardi at the University of Bristol explains, “it’s amazing how clear cut the change from ‘no dinosaurs’ to ‘all dinosaurs’ was.”

There just isn’t enough time, and it is another example of a failed prediction of the theory of evolution.

Photo credit: dmusicat, via Pixabay.

Cross-posted at Darwin’s God.