Ediacaran ‘explosion’
Another thumping headache for evolutionists
by Shaun Doyle
Photo wikipedia
Dickinsonia costata
Published: 5 March 2008(GMT+10)
One of the most famous features of the fossil record that evolutionists have a hard
time explaining is the ‘Cambrian explosion’. Most extant basic animal
bodyplans simply appear in the fossil record in the Lower Cambrian rocks with next
to no antecedent evidence of their existence in the rocks.1 Therefore, the major bodyplans of animals all had
to evolve very quickly, which is stretching the bounds of plausibility. However,
paleontologists have recently identified another ‘explosion’ in the
fossil record in the Ediacaran ‘period’, which they dubbed the ‘Avalon
Explosion’ (‘dated’ 635–542 Ma ago).2
The Ediacaran biota is a group of fossils of multicellular organisms that are found
directly below the Cambrian (‘dated’ 542–488 Ma), and they consist
of a wide range of morphologies. However, both their origin and relationship to
Cambrian animals is a complete mystery to evolutionists. They are typically divided
up into three major fossil assemblages: the Avalon (575–565 Ma), White Sea
(560–550 Ma) and Nama (550–542 Ma) assemblages.3 All these assemblages display an incredibly wide
array of morphology, and there is no trace of them in the fossil record above the
Ediacaran period.
Shen et al. point out that though there is a wide variety of morphology
in the Ediacaran biota, all the different fossil assemblages have a similar range
of morphology. Since they believe these different assemblages represent different
time periods within the Ediacaran period, they believe that there is little evolution
shown in the Ediacaran fossils. As Shen et al. report:
‘A comprehensive quantitative analysis of these fossils indicates that the
oldest Ediacara assemblage—the Avalon assemblage (575 to 565 Ma)—already
encompassed the full range of Ediacara morphospace.’4
the major bodyplans of animals all had to evolve very quickly, which is stretching
the bounds of plausibility
Therefore, they conclude that the rise of the Ediacara mirrors the Cambrian explosion,
with all its attendant problems for evolution. So now evolutionists have got not
one but two ‘big bangs in biology’5
to deal with within 50 million years of each other!
The Cambrian and Ediacaran explosions present a massive problem for evolution because
each records a wide variety of morphologies that come onto the scene practically
immediately according to the fossils, with no identifiable ancestors. Darwinian
evolution, on the other hand, would expect such widely disparate body plans to emerge
only after a long geological history.6
No known or accepted mechanism can account for such rapid evolution.
What’s worse is that the Cambrian and Ediacaran explosions bear no relationship
at all to one another. Therefore, this sort of ‘evolutionary explosion’
had to happen twice. Once stretches credulity to breaking point—twice
blows it out of the water completely.
The sudden appearance of this diverse assemblage of Ediacaran biota, of course,
provides no problem for a creationist understanding of the fossils. They are simply
another grouping of organisms that were overwhelmed and fossilized by the Flood.7,8
Related articles
References
- Marshall, C.R., Explaining the Cambrian ‘explosion’
of animals, Annual Review of Earth and Planetary Sciences 34:355–384,
2006. Return to text.
- Shen, B., Dong, L., Xiao, S. and Kowalewski, M., The
Avalon explosion: evolution of Ediacara morphospace, Science 319:81–84,
2008. Return to text.
- Waggoner, B.,
The Ediacaran biotas in space and time,
Integrative and Comparative Biology, 43:104–113, 2003.
Return to text.
- Shen et al., ref. 2, p. 81. ‘Morphospace’
is a spatial representation of the morphological range in a given classification
of organisms. Return to text.
- Berardelli, P.,
Another big bang for biology, ScienceNOW Daily News, 3 January 2008.
Return to text.
- Wells, J., Icons of Evolution, Regnery Publishing, Washington,
DC, pp. 41–42, 2000. Return to text.
- Wieland, C.,
Holy Grail or another evolutionary tale? Creation 27(3):20–22,
2005. Return to text.
- Froede Jr, C.R., Precambrian metazoans within a young-earth
Flood framework, Journal of Creation 13(2):90–95,
1999. Return to text.
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