I've always been fascinated by the strange creatures that left their fossil remains in the Burgess shale - Critters like Wiwaxia, Marrella, Anomalocaris, and my own personal favorite - Hallucigenia:
Now standing aside from any dispute about the actual age of these fossils, is there an agreement that these peculiar critters are representative of some of the
earliest of species?
I ask because what is evident in these creatures is a far greater diversity of bodyplan compared to those seen in species today. Indeed just about every living creature alive is topologically equivalent, being a tube with a single mouth-gut-anus arrangement. But these early fossils display significant deviations from this arrangement.
I would note that the situation is strikingly familiar to enthusiasts of vintage man-made artifacts of all types: I am thinking of the first aeroplanes with different numbers of wings and motor cars with seating arrangements no longer seen - not to mention radios, TVs, vacuum cleaners etc!
Our early-days efforts tend to display more design diversity because the most efficient solution to our requirements and indeed the requirements themselves take time to emerge. Our intellectual limitations give rise to a 'trial and error' approach and it is usually not one but many individuals, each with their own imperfect initial ideas, that are involved.
However, given a specific objective in a specific environment (such as vehicle speed, passenger capacity etc.) there is generally an optimum solution waiting to be arrived at. This eventually leads to uniformity - a convergence of style - no jet planes with six wings for example.
Now I am contemplating the same thing amongst the Pre-Cambrian fauna of the Burgess shale. Creatures with multiple mouths, tandem guts and so on. Why would an intelligent designer seem to be following the same path as us?