Tag: Cambrian Explosion
Peering into the Chrysalis: An Interview with Dr. Richard Stringer
The transformation from caterpillar to butterfly inside a chrysalis has been a profound mystery of nature. Using MRI for the first time on a chrysalis, however, Dr. Richard Stringer has begun to reveal the “inside story” of metamorphosis.
Alas, Precambrian Microfossils Are Not the Solution to Darwin’s Dilemma
“Ever since Darwin there has been a disturbing void, both paleontological and psychological, at the base of the Phanerozoic eon.”
An Eye-Opening Discovery: The Remarkable Vision of Anomalocaris
Anomalocaris is one of the many extraordinary creatures that emerge during the Cambrian explosion (~530 million years ago), seemingly without clear precursors.
BioLogos’s Fossil Record Page Conspicuously Missing the Cambrian Explosion
The BioLogos website has a static page titled “What does the fossil record show?,” which would naturally lead one to expect that if you read the page, then you’ll learn what the fossil record shows. What’s odd about the page is that the page makes no mention whatsoever of the Cambrian explosion. This is despite the fact that Robert L. Carroll calls the Cambrian explosion “[t]he most conspicuous event in metazoan evolution”: The most conspicuous event in metazoan evolution was the dramatic origin of major new structures and body plans documented by the Cambrian explosion. Until 530 million years ago, multicellular animals consisted primarily of simple, soft-bodied forms, most of which have been identified from the fossil record as cnidarians Read More ›
Fossil Finds Show Cambrian Explosion Getting More Explosive
Cephalopods, which include marine mollusks like squid, octopus, and cuttlefish, are now being reported in the Cambrian explosion fossils. As a recent BBC news article reports: “We go from very simple pre-Cambrian life-forms to something as complex as a cephalopod in the geological blink of an eye, which illustrates just how quickly evolution can produce complexity,” said [evolutionary biologist Martin] Smith. Keep in mind here that “evolution” is a placeholder term for an as-of-yet uncovered mechanism that produces animals like Cephalopods in a “geological blink of an eye.” Darwin’s Dilemma is not solved by vague appeals “how quickly” evolution can operate. All this follows on the heels of recent fossil findings that push phylum Bryozoa back into the Cambrian period, Read More ›