Evolution: An Objective Look

13. Species and Organs That Suddenly “Appear” in the Fossil Record

 The URL for my book is www.Evo-illusion.com.

The above video is about my book Evo-illusion, now available at Amazon. The page begins below.

Wickipedia:

According to a noted science journal: “Apart from some tantalizing Devonian fragments, insects first appear suddenly in the fossil record at the very beginning of the Late Carboniferous period, and Early Bashkirian age, about 350 million years ago. Insect species were already diverse and highly specialized by this time, with fossil evidence reflecting the presence of more than half a dozen different orders. Thus, the first insects probably emerged earlier in the Carboniferous period, or even in the preceding Devonian. Some have even suggested they originated from a terrestrial ancestor not later than in the Late Silurian or the Earliest Devonian. Research to discover these earliest insect ancestors in the fossil record continues.”

According to http://hannover.park.org/Canada/Museum

“The segmentation of the bodies of the Annelida (worms) and of insects indicates that these two groups probably have a close common ancestor. However, no trace of such an ancestor has ever been found in the fossil record. It has been difficult to establish that the Arthropoda have a single common ancestor. All of the large number of species in the phylum share some common attributes which identify them as arthropods (eg. jointed limbs ‘arthro-poda’ and the external skeleton), suggesting that they arose from one ancestor. However, the earliest fossils from the four main groups of Arthropoda are already so specialized that they may have evolved along four independent, but parallel, paths and thus acquired common arthropod characteristics. These four groups may be treated as superclasses.

The diversity of the insects is staggering. Approximately three-quarters of all animals are insects and the proportion on land is much greater, as virtually all non-insects live in the oceans. Insects have adapted to every habitat on land except for the polar regions (where it is impossible for them to survive, as only warm-blooded animals can withstand the cold).”

According to another journal:

“The origin of insect flight remains obscure, since the earliest winged insects currently known appear to have been capable fliers. (Insta-flight. They also had eyes, so they were insta-eyed too!) Some extinct insects (e.g. the Palaeodictyoptera) had an additional pair of winglets attached to the first segment of the thorax, for a total of three pairs.” Not only did insects appear instantly in the fossil record, but flight was also instantaneous. And, no insect could possibly fly without eyes, so eyes were on the list of instantaneous appearances.

National Geographic 11/06: “And yet, as he (Darwin) wrote to a friend in 1879, flowers were for him an “abominable mystery”. Darwin was referring the sudden, unheralded emergence of flowers in the fossil record. Making the mystery all the more abominable was the exquisite complexity of flowers.”

http://www.naturalhistorymag.com/features/0400_feature1.html regarding heart evolution:
“They’ve also discovered that the change from simple tube to complex, chambered organ may have happened in an evolutionary flash.”

“Fossil birds appear in the rocks out of nowhere.” (National Geographic Special, Dec. 06) And, again, birds couldn’t possibly fly without eyes! So, the wings and eyes of birds made a pretty quick appearance..

That Damn Cambrian Explosion:

If you had the capability of walking the earth 600 million years ago, it would look like a near-sterile planet. The earth was covered by unicellular organisms not visible to the human naked eye.  At that time, almost all of life was composed of single-celled plants and animals, requiring a microscope for viewing. Then, circa 530 MYA, in a geologic flash, out of nowhere, came the vast majority of body types in what was called the Cambrian Explosion. Ev-illusionists have wracked their brains trying to think of excuses for this incredible time period, instead of looking at it with a scientific eye and talking about it as if it might be a reason that Darwin was wrong. They do everything they can to make it look like it is somehow evidence that favors their belief system. It doesn’t. The Cambrian Explosion is nothing but bad news for evo-illusionists. And the more it is studied, the worse it gets. Darwin was upset about this period. His thoughts from “Origin”: “several of the main divisions of the animal kingdom suddenly appear in the lowest known fossiliferous rocks.” He called this a “serious” problem which “at present must remain inexplicable, and may be truly urged as a valid argument against the views here entertained” (Excerpt A, pp. 82, 85). He conceded that he really had “no satisfactory answer” to the problem (Excerpt A, p. 84).

To give you a real idea about the significance of the Cambrian Explosion:

Single-celled species appeared on earth approximately 3.7  BYA.  If this time period was placed on the clock face of a 24-hour clock, the first 21 hours would have species that could only be seen by microscope. If you could walk the earth, it would look like a nearly sterile environment. Then, in the 21st hour, in a period of about two minutes, virtually all of the animal types now inhabiting the earth appeared. They had complex eyes, spinal chords,  pumping hearts, complex jointed limbs with muscles to run them; and brains.

Click on the graphs to enlarge.

   Of 37 phyla that have ever existed on earth, approximately half to two-thirds appeared in a 5 million year period, incredibly sudden for geologic time, with absolutely no finding of precursor phyla. Precambrian strata have been thoroughly searched, and no Precambrian species have been located that can be shown to have evolved into new Cambrian Explosion species, to the great disappointment of the Darwinian world. According to Richard Dawkins, a leading evo-illusionist, in his book The Blind Watchmaker: “The Cambrian strata of rocks, vintage about 600 million years, are the oldest ones in which we find most of the major invertebrate groups. And we 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.” What does this do to the famous “tree of life” cartoon that is now in high school and college textbooks throughout the world? It should be drastically modified or removed, just like the speciation cartoons should be. But, of course, “the tree” remains in place as more fake evidence of Darwinian evo-illusion.

According to:

http://www.raceandhistory.com/Science/whenlifeexploded.htm

Indeed, while most people cling to the notion that evolution works its magic over millions of years, scientists are realizing that biological change often occurs in sudden fits and starts. And none of those fitful starts was more dramatic, more productive or more mysterious than the one that occurred shortly after Erwin’s wormlike creature slithered through the primordial seas. All around the world, in layers of rock just slightly younger than that Erwin discovered, scientists have found the mineralized remains of organisms that represent the emergence of nearly every major branch in the zoological tree. Among them: bristle worms and roundworms, lamp shells and mollusks, sea cucumbers and jellyfish, not to mention an endless parade of arthropods, those spindly legged, hard-shelled ancient cousins of crabs and lobsters, spiders and flies. There are even occasional glimpses–in rock laid down not long after Erwin’s Namibian sandstone–of small, ribbony swimmers with a rodlike spine that are unprepossessing progenitors of the chordate line, which leads to fish, to amphibians and eventually to humans.

Where did this extraordinary bestiary come from, and why did it emerge so quickly? In recent years, no question has stirred the imagination of more evolutionary experts, spawned more novel theories or spurred more far-flung expeditions. Life has occupied the planet for nearly 4 billion of its 4.5 billion years. But until about 600 million years ago, there were no organisms more complex than bacteria, multicelled algae, and single-celled plankton. The first hint of biological ferment was a plethora of mysterious palm-shape, frondlike creatures that vanished as inexplicably as they appeared. Then, 543 million years ago, in the early Cambrian, within the span of no more than 10 million years, creatures with teeth and tentacles and claws and jaws materialized with the suddenness of apparitions. In a burst of creativity like nothing before or since nature appears to have sketched out the blueprints for virtually the whole of the animal kingdom. This explosion of biological diversity is described by scientists as biology’s Big Bang.

Over the decades, evolutionary theorists beginning with Charles Darwin have tried to argue that the appearance of multicelled animals during the Cambrian merely seemed sudden, and in fact, had been preceded by a lengthy period of evolution for which the geological record was missing. But this explanation, while it patched over a hole in an otherwise masterly theory, now seems increasingly unsatisfactory. Since 1987, discoveries of major fossil beds in Greenland, in China, in Siberia, and now in Namibia have shown that the period of biological innovation occurred at virtually the same instant in geologic time all around the world.

What could possibly have powered such a radical advance? Was it something in the organisms themselves or the environment in which they lived? Today an unprecedented effort to answer these questions is underway. Geologists and geochemists are reconstructing the Precambrian planet, looking for changes in the atmosphere and ocean that might have put evolution into sudden overdrive. Developmental biologists are teasing apart the genetic toolbox needed to assemble animals as disparate as worms and flies, mice and fish. And paleontologists are exploring deeper reaches of the fossil record, searching for organisms that might have primed the evolutionary pump. “We’re getting data,” says Harvard University paleontologist Andrew Knoll, “almost faster than we can digest it.”

It’s pretty strange that not long after the Cambrian nature spent hundreds of millions of years not getting any more complex. Species had brains, eyes, hearts, all the same stuff; until recently when primates and man showed up. The main changes involved locomotion (flight and land motion) and air breathing.  So, hundreds of millions of years with different species but nothing really more complex. Theropod dinosaurs were no less complex than a giraffe. Complex species were rare previous to the Cambrian, but some did appear. Then the explosion, and from there on, for nearly 500,000,000 years, not much else happened. Then, 100,000 or so years ago, 1/5,000 of the time from the Cambrian,  the last few seconds on our 24-hour clock, man with intelligence and consciousness appeared. Nature lays down the strangest Puzzle. It then gives us a cognitive brain that can’t figure out the Puzzle it gave. Truly a form of torture of the intelligent.

Ev-illusionists try to explain the sudden appearance of so many species and organs by saying that evolution can happen in a flash, then go on without change for long periods of time. They have labeled this “punctuated equilibrium”. This scenario is completely preposterous. M and NS should occur at a rather constant rate. Solar events could speed up and slow down the rate to a degree, but that scenario would not even be close to explaining the sudden appearance of so many species and organs. And, again, solar rays almost always cause mutational disasters. Evolutionists feel that if they take evidence AGAINST their belief, give it a scientific label, and discuss it like it was expected, they can turn it into evidence FOR evolution. Another great part of the illusion.

It’s interesting to note the distribution of phyla produced by the Cambrian and at other times.  The Cambrian explosion exhibits an extraordinary morphological
breadth and representation of the different animal phyla. Cambrian rocks display about half (or more) of the basic body plans or architectural designs of the animal
kingdom. Examples of nineteen of the forty known animal phyla clearly make their first appearance in the fossil record during the Cambrian explosion.  Three phyla appear before the Cambrian. Six animal phyla first appear in the fossil record after the Cambrian period.  Astoundingly,  and twelve phyla are not represented in the fossil record at all!  These are modern animals with no fossil history. Nevertheless, many paleontologists think that almost all of these additional eighteen phyla may well have originated during the Cambrian explosion. Some authorities even estimate that all animal phyla might have come into existence during the
Cambrian explosion. As Valentine, Jablonski, and Erwin argue, “All living phyla may have originated by the end of the [Cambrian] explosion.”

Whales are another group that appears suddenly. They have been tied to many small land species that resemble raccoons.  Indohyus and Pakicetus are examples. But these species are tiny compared to whales, so all comparisons are silly, but done anyway. And if you doubt that these tiny furred quadrupeds evolved into the largest animals to ever exist on the earth, you are, of course, a fool. “Like the bats, the whales (using the term in a general and inclusive sense) appear suddenly in early Tertiary times, fully adapted by profound modifications of the basic mammalian structure for a highly specialized mode of life.” (Colbert, 1955, p. 303)

Not only whales appeared suddenly, but their unique hearing system, which is totally internal, also appeared quickly: Cetaceans (whales, dolphins and porpoises) have unique semicircular canals that allow them to be highly acrobatic swimmers without becoming dizzy. A team of international scientists, including Hans Thewissen, an anatomist and paleontologist at the Northeastern Ohio Universities College of Medicine (NEOUCOM), investigated this organ in ancient fossils.  The researchers found that early whales acquired this special trait quickly and early on in their evolution.  This was a defining event that likely resulted in their total independence of life on land.  (A quickly forming whale with a quickly forming auditory system? My gawd, how do they know this? Astounding.)

This is only a short list of the species and organs that appear in the fossil record “in a flash”; not like Darwin had envisioned. Actually considering the number of species involved, it a a rather long list. Was Darwin himself more honest than his worshipers today? In Darwin’s own words:“The number of intermediate varieties, which have formerly existed must be truly enormous. Why then is not every geological formation and every stratum full of such intermediate links? Geology assuredly does not reveal any such finely graduated organic chain; and this, perhaps is the most obvious and serious objection which can be urged against the theory.” (Darwin, Charles, Origin of Species, 6th edition, 1902 p. 341-342)