Explanations for the Cambrian Explosion

Activity at EvC has been rather low recently. Perhaps it's because we're all talking about obscure and highly technical stuff that bores the average person. It might be nice to talk about one of the classics again.I haven’t seen a thread devoted entirely to the Cambrian Explosion for awhile, even though the topic has come up often in passing in many different threads. I particularly like the Cambrian Explosion, because, as an entomologist and a long-time science-fiction fan, I have always been interested in bizarre creatures, and the Cambrian Explosion has its share of bizarre creatures, such as Opabinia regalis (my personal favorite).So, what does everyone think about the Cambrian Explosion?As most of us know, creationists will often cite the apparently rapid radiation of animal groups around the beginning of the Cambrian period as evidence against the uniformitarian principles that scientists generally consider prevalent in the processes of evolution. Often, however, reference to the Cambrian Explosion is only made in passing, and no major attempt is made to explain its relevance in the thread. So, I propose this thread to discuss the role of the Cambrian Explosion in the evolutionary and ID models of natural history.I argue that the Cambrian Explosion does not evidence a special creation. I would like to explore perhaps three main themes:

1. The Phyla Argument: Creationist claims inflate the drama of the event by pointing out that all modern phyla appear within 50 million years, while failing to note that the difference between phyla at the time was far less than the difference between their descendants today. This was discussed rather thoroughly here, so it need not be emphasized in this thread: I included it so that it wouldn’t be simply overlooked.
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2. The Pace Argument: Creationists claim that the “rapid” appearance of a diverse fauna must be interpreted by evolutionists as an unrealistically fast rate of change, and that it is thus better explained as an untransitioned, spontaneous creation. However, I contend that mutations need not have happened at a higher rate than today, because the lower diversity in the fauna would have lowered competition and allowed a greater proportion of the mutations that occurred to survive and accumulate. Aside from this, there may not be any support for the claim evolution during the Cambrian Explosion happened at a faster pace, anyway.
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3. The Snapshot Effect: Creationist claims of suddenness for the Cambrian Explosion are also compounded by the “snapshot” effect. Claiming that the appearance of Cambrian shelly fauna in only a handful of locations is evidence of spontaneous creation is akin to claiming that the discovery of only a single praying mantis in a field indicates that said mantis must have been created by God, because there was nothing around it for it to have evolved from.

-----I would be interested in hearing creationists' response to the last two points (let's save point #1 for emergencies, such as if the thread dies down too early, or something).Edited by Adminnemooseus, : Fix URL - There was a space bunging it up.

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-BluejayDarwin loves you.

Hi, Doubting Too.Thanks for you comments.I think everyone else has done a good job explaining the common ancestor bit, so I'll refrain from adding my input. But, I'd like to address one thing you said: The main drawback isn't the identity of the Designer. The main drawback is that the natural world simply doesn't look like a bunch of models built from the same pool of parts, as your Honda cars do.See, Honda has a certain suite of parts that it has available to it, either by its own manufacture or by contract with other companies, and their engineers can pretty much mix-and-match and redesign any of the various parts to make a car.In nature, we don't see that. Typically, what we see is that the parts are not randomly distibuted, but dispensed in regular blocks that form a nested, hierarchical pattern. For instance, there is a group of organisms that contains a set of parts: a protein exoskeleton, jointed legs and a segmented body (we call them the arthropods). A subset of that group has the first three pairs of legs modified into mouthparts, three pairs of legs modified for walking, and a special organ in the antennae (we call them the insects). A subset of that group has two pairs of wings and a specific hingeing of the mouthparts (we call them the Pterygota).The point is that all organisms can be united in a nested sequence like this. The parts are distributed within well-defined groups of organisms. Those groups can be combined with other well-defined groups into a larger, well-defined groups that are united by parts and features common to them all. And, so on, until you can include all organisms within a single group based on shared characteristics.Try this website (the Tree of Life Web Project): they have the phylogenetic tree laid out rather well. You can see how the parts aren't randomly scattered across organisms, as the parts of cars are, but are contained within well-defined, nested groups.-----How does this relate to the Cambrian Explosion? Well, lots of paleontologists have reconstructed lots of organisms from fossils found in, before and after the Cambrian. The basic features that define most of our modern groups of animals today are found in primitive form, in some of those organisms from the Cambrian Era.Take Pikaia, for instance. It is an animal that resembles simple vertebrates (lancelets). It has a notocord (spinal cord), and muscle blocks very similar to the muscle blocks in lancelets and fish. It doesn't have a skeleton yet, but animals with skeletons are found later.

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-BluejayDarwin loves you.

Hi, Doubting Too. No, you're still wrong.One thing you need to do is to stop using political debate tactics. Words like "speculate" are only used to slander your opponent's position.You did not notice what all that "speculating" those scientists are doing is based on, but only took hold of the part where it said, "we're not 100% positive that we're correct."I'm not even going to try to explain to you the science of phylogenetics, because it would take entirely too long, and this whole "Tree of Life" discussion is not the point of this thread, anyway. Seriously, though, if you want to debate on this issue, make sure you read a good deal of stuff, and take a class or something, before you come out with a strong position and insist that all scientists are blundering idiots. This is a newspaper article. People who write newspaper articles are trained in the arts of "spicing things up" to make them interesting. You really shouldn't read much into this.The Tree of Life is a fascinating topic, one that perhaps deserves a number of threads of its own to discuss. I provided you the link so you could understand what the tree of life implies: I never intended it to be a continuation of this discussion. If you want to start a thread about the base of the tree of life, go for it.----- Two points to be made:

1. Actually, your message only confirms that some people think scientists are confused.
2. I assure you that the people working on the Tree of Life are not nearly as confused as you are about this.

-----Now, back to the Cambrian Explosion: The "Cambrian Explosion" is an unfortunate name from the phenomenon. Just like the "Big Bang" isn't a theory about the universe "exploding" into existence from nothing, the "Cambrian Explosion" is not an example of biodiversity "exploding" out of nothing.The problem is that the evidence we have is sketchy: only a few locations on earth are known to have accessible Cambrian rocks that have fossils in them. Since each of these locations necessarily has a short date range, it looks like life suddenly appeared, because no life was found in rocks slightly older. This is what I called the "Snapshot Effect" in the Opening Post.More fossil locations and fossil analyses have become available recently, and there is no longer any reason to think that all these animals suddenly "popped" out of nowhere. For that reason, the "Cambrian Explosion" does not appear to be anything particularly unusual that needs special attention from the Theory of Evolution.

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-BluejayDarwin loves you.

Hi, Doubting Too. In a debate, your "opponent" is someone who takes the opposite view from you. Whether you like it or not, you and I are “opposed” to one another in terms of our views about the Tree of Life and evolution. By definition, that makes us “opponents.” That you attribute a bad connotation to that word is not a problem worth even the slightest consideration. Opponents need not be enemies, but that doesn’t mean we can just distance ourselves from the reality that we are at a fundamental disagreement, which disagreement is the basic principle behind this discussion.-----Obviously, we’re not going to get anywhere in this debtate until we explain everything about the tree of life, evidence for evolution, and natural history to you. The problem with this approach is that we will spend a lot of time giving you back-up, and the thread will spill over the post limit before we even get to the intended subject.But, here we go anyway: You’re right: I should have chosen a better way to present this. But, you say that scientists are “speculating” about the tree of life, when I happen to know from personal experience that they are actually reporting the results of countless tiresome experiments and studies. The word “speculate” refers to people making stuff up off the top of their head based on a preliminary, cursory glance at some piece of information.Of course, scientists speculate all the time. But, they don’t present speculations in peer-reviewed journals or in big science conferences, unless the intent is to stimulate conversation that could eventually turn the speculation into hypotheses to test by experimentation.But, you have essentially called months of hard work in a laboratory “speculation.” To that, I take a small measure of offense. Anyone can interpret anything however they want to. But, that doesn’t make the interpretation scientific. If your interpretation of some evidence is in direct contradiction to many, many other pieces of evidence, there is simply no reason for anyone to take your interpretation seriously.For example, you want to look at those sixteen pictures of fossils and interpret them as evidence of intelligent design. Your interpretation would then be in direct contradiction to entire series of fossils found segregated in the geological layers in a pattern that hauntingly resembles gradual, undirected change over time (and not segregated by, for example, floating capacity, as you’d expect in the case that the Flood was responsible). It would also be in direct contradiction to about decades of work with geological dating techniques, which, despite creationist claims, are not wildly erratic nor unreliable. Your interpretation would also contradict thousands of genetics studies, which not only show patterns of accumulating change in human populations that go back thousands of years before Creation Week, but also dovetail quite nicely with the genetics studies in other primates, other mammals, other vertebrates, and, finally, with all other organisms on the face of the planet.I cannot explain all of this evidence to you in this thread. But, I encourage you to keep reading, as you have been doing, but to read widely in many separate fields of science: there is a strong tendency in all these fields (genetics, paleontology, ecology, geology, etc.) for the evidence collected to conform to the predictions and expectations of the Theory of Evolution. ToE is not idle speculation: it’s the collected sum conclusions of over 200 years of constant work. Don’t turn it into a contest of trust. It’s not about who’s saying what, it’s about what the evidence points to. I don’t care if you don’t listen to anybody (in fact, you shouldn’t listen to anybody): what I care about is that the correct conclusions are arrived at through critical examination of the evidence. Critical examination of the evidence has led us to conclude that evolution is the best explanation for the diversity of life today and in the fossil record. Creationism does not stand up to critical examination.And, none of those creatures is my ancestor: they are all arthropods, molluscs, and some other groups that are probably extinct. Keep in mind that there are over 65,000 fossils from the Burgess Shale (which is one of the biggest Cambrian fossil locations in the world): your 16 pictures hardly encompass the diversity found there. But, there is one animal from the Cambrian period, called Pikaia that is either the ancestor, or the cousin of the ancestor, of all vertebrates (you and I are both vertebrates, so this animal would either constitute our direct ancestor, or the direct descendant of our direct ancestor: it would be like our cousin, as Parasomnium explained). I provided the link to the Wikipedia article about Pikaia in an earlier message (the blue, underlined word in this sentence is the same link).Keep in mind that we do not have to support all exact lineages and sequences of every, single organism on Earth in order to support the Theory of Evolution. The evidence that we have is not universal, but it is general enough to support the claim that all organisms evolve. Whether or not there is a single common ancestor is still an open question, although the likelihood for multiple “baramin” or “kinds” at the outset of Creation is extremely slim, if existent at all.We simply do not know the exact formation of the Tree of Life (that’s why the Tree of Life Project is going on: scientists from around the world are doing phylogenetics on as many organisms as possible to elucidate the Tree to the highest degree attainable). But, our evidence is good enough to show that there is a Tree of Life. And, a Tree of Life is, itself, good evidence for the Theory of Evolution. The simple answer is, “No.” Although we can be quite certain about many theories of science, including evolution, we cannot even come close to explaining everything. We don’t really know if it’s possible for a single species to persist for hundreds of millions of years (evidence suggests that it’s not possible, but we can’t be sure), nor are we really certain that we could look at a fossilized Opabinia regalis, and a living organism that looks the same, and conclude that are they are, in fact, the same species.But, descendants of many of those fossils are found today. You and I are descendants of one of those organisms. The spiders and insects that I study are also descendants of some of those organisms. Jellyfish, starfish, slugs, all kinds of worms and dinosaurs all had ancestors during the Cambrian period (most of those ancestors are either present, or have cousins present, in the fossil record of the Cambrian period).----- No, you can’t speculate that “Darwin took us for a ride.” Charles Darwin was a great scientist for his time, but he is not a prophet, or a messiah, and his words are not Holy Writ to us. His contributions to science are not religious tenets that we uphold by faith and diligent pondering: rather, we have built on the start that he gave us, and, now, we know more about evolution than he ever did. We aren’t “believers” in Darwin’s holy word: we’re scientist who have found evidence to support one of several hypotheses in the natural world. I have personally not even read the entire Origin of Species (Darwin’s book that originally introduced the Theory of Evolution by Natural Selection). Mainly, we discuss him from a historical perspective in science classes. Today, we talk more about science that has been done recently, and that science generally agrees with what Darwin was saying.As to your question about finding a trilobite today: also, “No.” All animals today are descendants of animals that lived in the Cambrian period. Trilobites went extinct. Many other forms of animals went extinct, just as the non-avian dinosaurs would go extinct 400 million years after the “Cambrian Explosion.” Many lineages of animals have gone extinct. But, many have also survived until today. If the trilobites were among that number of survivors, it would no more effect the Theory of Evolution than if the mammals were among that number of survivors.

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-BluejayDarwin loves you.

Hi, Doubting Too You are still using that word, even after I explained to you why it is erroneous. The theory of common ancestry is not speculation: the conformity of all organisms to a single genetic code with myriads of small variations on the same suite of genes, some of which variations are not important to the construction of the organism, is clearly indicative of a non-teleological origin of all living things from a common mold, probably from a single common mold (though this is still not certain).I tell you again, you cannot call it speculation simply because you haven't taken the time to understand all the thinking, experimenting, and effort that went into it.Furthermore, saying that the pictures support creation is also an “interpretation,” one, in your case, that is based on an extremely tiny bit of information and even less effort to understand it.----- Your personaly feelings have no place in an objective search for truth. I abhor the thought that God would kill a man for touching a holy artifact, but that appears to be what God did. So, you abhot the thought that you evolved from something else, but that appears to be what you did.The only advice I can offer is: “Get over it.”----- I’m sure that’s not it. Keep in mind that most mammals prey on other mammals, most insects prey on other insects, and most animals out there may be cannibalistic.And, no, trilobites have definitely been extinct for over 200 million years, as evidenced by the fact that they have only ever been seen as fossils in rocks that are over 200 million years old. Many arthropods look like each other to the untrained eye (I discern fly families by the direction the head bristles bend or by the veins in the wing, just for an example), and there are many organisms that one might mistake for a trilobite or for Anomalocaris or something.Furthermore, fish are not particularly closely related to trilobites. Trilobites are arthropods, while fish are vertebrates. The two groups’ last common ancestor lived well before the Cambrian period, and true vertebrates wouldn’t appear until the late Cambrian period. In fact, no animal alive today has a trilobite as its ancestor (that’s what is meant when we say, “trilobites are extinct”).----- And, a shepherd might look around himself and, upon seeing no wolves, conclude that this was a safe place to raise sheep.If you draw your conclusions from a small set of data, and without putting any effort into it, I would suggest you use the word “speculate” in the same sentence, while simultaneously refraining from using the word “speculate” in reference to people with a large set of data, and who have put in hours, days, weeks, months and even years of effort.----- You keep getting the “b” and “l” in “trilobites” switched around. What ”Cat was talking about is that we know that trilobites are cousins of other arthropods, but we don’t know whether they’re first cousins, second cousins, once removed, twice removed, etc. In fact, they’re probably all of those things in relation to different groups of arthropods. It’s just like going to a family reunion: your cousin is somebody else’s uncle, and your grandfather is somebody else’s brother. But, in the case of the arthropods, we don’t actually know who is who’s father or brother: we only know that they belong to the same “family” (“clade” is a better term here: “family” means something else in taxonomy).Another thing that you must look at is that animals in the Cambrian period are very different from animals today (even though they share some features in common with modern animals). So, whatever hypothesis you propose to re-explain natural history, must explain why there is a difference between fossil organisms in Cambrian rocks, fossil organisms in other rock layers, and living organisms today. Intelligent Design does not do this: the Theory of Evolution does.----- First, my name has no spaces in it. It looks like this: Second, I’m already married to a woman who I’m pretty sure is way hotter than Larni, and we have the cutest little baby that world has ever seen. And, I’m still an evolutionist.

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-BluejayDarwin loves you.

Hi, Larni. Only a psychology professional would have taken it so well.

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-BluejayDarwin loves you.

Hi, Jason777.Sorry I took so long to respond.In all honesty, though, I don't find much point in responding to most of your post. But, I do want to respond to this: I have explained this many times on this website, and it still upsets me enough that I want to do it again now.Evolution is not the theory that a rabbit in the Cambrian period would falsify. The word you want is natural history. You do not, apparently, have a problem with the concept of evolution when it is properly defined, and I am extremely tired of people conflating a historical model of life on earth that they loathe with a theory that explains how heredity determines the future of a lineage of organisms.Rabbits in the Cambrian would disprove the current model of natural history, which has rabbits first evolving in the Eocene or something like that. Rabbits in the Cambrian would not disprove the current model of evolution, which states that the environment creates a "selective force" that causes all organisms to match its conditions or fail to persist.There is a reason why white tigers are rare in the wild: they can't get any food because they can't sneak up on their prey. There is a reason why diopsid flies have their eyes on long stalks: because longer stalks attract more females and facilitate greater success in jousting with other males. There is a reason why bacteria survive better when mutations enhance their ability to utilize the substrate on which they are raised: they get more food from their substrate.We have a name for this bunch of phenomena. It's called evolution by natural selection. Rabbits in the Cambrian wouldn't change that.So, when you say, “this proves that evolution is unfalsifiable,” what you are saying is, “this proves natural history unfalsifiable.” This is, technically, true, simply because natural history is not a rigid theory, but a historical narrative that must be rewritten every time a new fossil is found.Those who are inclined to think religiously want everything that people study, ponder, work on, subsribe to or support to be bundled up into a tidy syndrome that they can suffix with “-ism.” But, the fact remains that scientific theories are discreet entities, and you must treat them as such, in your disproofs as much as in your conflatory preaching.-----Aside from that, the rest of your post about land plants in the Cambrian period doesn't really mean much. It’s an interesting topic, in its own right, but is not the topic of this thread. Propose a topic, and perhaps you’ll get an interesting discussion going. I personally have no expertise in paleobotany: I know very little beyond Lepidodendron and Calamites, so I probably will not greatly attend your discussion. Good luck in your endeavor.Now, back to the Cambrian explosion.

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-BluejayDarwin loves you.

The Kid!Welcome to the thread, man! Like you, I respect Doubting Too for his inoffensive manner and his humility in presenting his position.However, from my perspective, Doubting Too did not ask, “where did these come from?” Rather, he drew his own conclusion based on a page of photographs that he found on the net, and decided to reject the hard-earned witness of many researchers whose work has compiled over 200 years to finally arrive at the conclusion that cursory glances at things do not produce sound results.----- Actually, what we see in the Cambrian “Poof” is about half a dozen rock formations (naturally representing about half a dozen dates/date ranges), bearing thousands of fossils, and virtually no fossils of any kind whatsoever interspersed between these rock formations. You can interpret this as sudden creation events, if you’d like, but it’s far more parsimonious to interpret them as a few rocks suitable for fossilization, and many rocks unsuitable for fossilization (this is actually a much better interpretation for both evolutionary and creationary natural history).Otherwise, it would be your duty to explain why God only covered organisms in certain kinds of sediments during the Flood, while preventing them from being covered in other types of sediments. The onus would also be on you to explain the gaps between the few rock formations that we have. You could explain them as repeated “creation-destroy-creation” sequences”that’s easy enough: God was experimenting, trying to find the exact combinations that He wanted in His biosphere. You will also have to explain why these different sets of fossils fit so darn well into the evolutionary picture of radiation and selection.But, whatever you do, you must consider the implications of your theory before you taut it as logical based on the frailties of your admittedly weak opponents: your opponents, well aware of their own frailties, have already considered the implications of their side, and have already found the solution (it wasn’t hard for us).To me, it makes good sense to say something like, “Shale preserves fossils; other rocks don’t.” And, there is sufficient space between the formations for the evolution of the earlier faunas into the later ones to have occurred. Thus, the evolutionary natural history model doesn’t have anything else to explain, while the creationary natural history model has a lot of contingencies to explain.Convenient for us, isn’t it? We planned it that way.{AbE: For Huntard: "OOS" is "Origin of Species"---it's AOkidspeak for "ToE/Abiogenesis," which, to him, are one and the same.}Edited by Bluejay, : Addition for Huntard

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-BluejayDarwin loves you.

Hi, AlphaOmegakid (I'd be more diligent about using your full name if it weren't so frickin' long). I don’t know: I thought it was kind of clever, myself. But then, I’m just an ignorant evolutionist: what do I know, right? I've noticed. No, those are called "blue jays," not "Bluejays." Do you see the differences (there are two)?And, you do know what kids are taught about people who name themselves after God, right? ----- First of all, nobody here has claimed that complex, multicellular life has been around for 2.1 billion years, which makes this kind of a stupid argument for you to be making.Second, all that is required is that no ~600 to ~650 million-year-old fossiliferous rocks have surfaced (to where paleontologists can get at them). This actually isn’t a very improbable thing, you know. And, it certainly doesn’t in any way show that uniformitarianism is wrong. That you have to rely on this sort of evidence to make that point is really telling.Third, even if there were fossilogenic rocks 650 million years ago, I’m willing to stipulate that any Metazoa from that time period were soft-bodied, gelatinous things like ctenophores and Trichoplax, neither of which, to my knowledge, has ever appeard in any part of the fossil record. Maybe there were sponges with spicules, but I don’t know much about how well spicules fossilize, or how easy it is to distinguish a fossilized spicule from a grain of sand, so I’ll not comment more on that.Fourth, let’s say you’re right, that metazoan fossils from Doushantuo (~580 Mya) are the first Metazoa. I don’t even have a problem with that: the Doushantuo fossils are much less complex and much smaller than later Ediacaran, Maotianshan and Burgess shale organisms, which still fits nicely into the picture of evolutionary natural history.Seventh and lastly (bet you can’t name the reference), the “explosive” quality of the Cambrian “poof” is similar to the radiations that took place following each of the major extinction events. This suggests (to me, anyway) that the Cambrian “explosion” isn’t a particularly unusual event that requires a separate explanation from the theory of evolution by natural selection.

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-BluejayDarwin loves you.

Hi, Omnipresentkid. Remember, I am an entomologist. Perhaps you would be able to explain to me why the insect fossil record is orders of magnitude more sparse than the vertebrate fossil record, despite the fact that insects were always undoubtedly more abundant than vertebrates (at least since the Carboniferous), and despite the fact that they have "hard parts."You know what? Don't bother. I can explain it for you:When a paleontologist says “hard parts,” they are referring to mineralized hard parts, because mineralized hard parts fossilize well. Arthropods generally have organic hard parts(trilobites apparently had mineralized parts, which is why their fossil record is so complete), and organic hard parts do not fossilize well. Therefore, a paleontologist does not regard arthropod exoskeletons as “hard parts.” Furthermore, nematologists insist that nematodes (roundworms) are far more abundant than arthropods (but, when you study worms, you desperately cling to whatever validation you can get, so I don’t believe them ), and nematodes are soft-bodied (except for some hooks on their mouths that might fossilize, though I’ve never heard of them in the fossil record). So, your statement that “most invertebrates have hard parts”is wrong.Sorry to inform you of this tiny fact.P.S. I think you would do well to research the term “lagersttte” (plural: “lagersttten”). Start here (as always, Wikipedia), and pay particular attention to the commonness of such fossil layers. These constitute the majority of the fossil record of soft-bodied invertebrates. Maybe then you can appreciate why evolution has a hard time assembling a natural history for infertebrates.----- NosyNed has already answered this point adequately, but why should I let him have all the fun?You’re intentionally playing dumb here. You know it doesn’t say “zilch” before 580 Mya. In fact, your “smorgasbord” at Doushantuo (presumably the 580 Mya you mentioned) actually consists of small organisms of intermediate complexity between Cambrian and pre-Doushantuo faunas (i.e. no eyes, no legs, no shells). Behold, the Wiki page about Vernanimalcula, which is the source of all the fuss about “580 Mya.” Notice the diagram of the animal, particularly its complete lack of anything that we would definitively call “eyes” or “legs.”Once again, paleontology has produced an intermediate between two levels of complexity, and creationists have somehow managed to completely fail to notice.Edited by Bluejay, : Added the bit about trilobite mineralized exoskeletons.

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-BluejayDarwin loves you.

Hi, AlphOmegakid. Nope. Never heard of them.Are you aware that insects outnumber molluscs more than 10 to 1? Are you aware that nematodes may be as common as (or much more common than) insects, and that they definitely outnumber molluscs by a wide margin?Why the hell should I care about the molluscs when they represent less than 10% of the invertebrates? Because they represent a huge portion of the invertebrate fossil record? I’m not sure how you don’t realize that this entirely proves my point.----- Maybe I wasn’t clear enough about mineralization. When I said, “mineralized,” I was not referring to preservation. The shell of a mollusc and the bones of a vertebrate contain large amounts of minerals (with calcium, phosphate, etc.). Pearl, mother-of-pearl, ivory, etc. are minerals.Mineralized objects fossilize well: this means that the natural minerals are replaced by minerals from the sediment in which the object is buried.Most invertebrates do not have mineral-based hard parts: chitin, the most common “hard part” in invertebrates, is an organic molecule. Organic molecules don’t last as well as minerals. And, chitin is the substance from which all insect exoskeletons are made (some might have minerals, like hard-shelled beetles, for instance, but most don’t).But then, I assume you know all of this already because it’s all outlined very nicely on the Martinez-Delclos page you provided me, which, contrary to what you claimed, does not say that the insect fossil record is as diverse and complete as the vertebrate fossil record. It doesn’t say that, because saying that would be foolish.Let’s break it down for you:Pick any vertebrate order you want. Let’s go with Carnivora, because that’s a cool one. How many fossils carnivorans have been found since the order first arose about 40 Mya? Lions, jaguars, tigers, dire wolves, saber-toothed cats, nimravids, hyenas, cheetahs, bears, procyonids, seals, etc., many, such as the panda, with several transitionals. Probably hundreds of carnivoran taxa have been found in 40 Myrs.How about an insect order? Let’s go with Mantodea, because it’s my favorite, and I did a review paper on the mantid fossil record last year. There are only about 20 taxa known since the beginning of the Cretaceous (150 Mya; when the oldest mantid fossils are found), most of which are represented by fewer than three or four specimina, and none of which is known from a complete, adult specimen. The majority of fossils are nymphs in amber and disarticulated wings (one of which was originally described as a mayfly).Yet, today, there are over 2000 living species of mantids (and probably 100 or 200 more undescribed), and there are only 260 species of Carnivorans. Explain, in your own words, the disparity in fossil numbers with something other than, “mantids don’t fossilize as well as carnivorans.”If you can’t, kindly shut up and stop making your ridiculous argument.Relating it back to the topic, since insects apparently fossilize much less readily than do vertebrates, how many soft-bodied things and soft-exoskeletal things do you think escaped our notice during, before and after the Cambrian Explosion? Probably a lot.-----And, in regards to your continual posting of a fish to Coyote, you brought up the Flood yourself--- ---so don’t accuse somebody else of “red herrings.” If we are interpreting your sentence wrongly, the correct manner of handling this is to tell us what you did mean by it, instead of just sticking your fingers in your ears and refusing to support your arguments. And, if it truly is a red herring, the proper response is to not respond to it, so as to not clutter Bluejay’s most frequented thread at EvC with pictures of fish.However, if you are, once again, unwilling to support what is obviously your Explanation for the Cambrian Explosion (i.e. the Flood), give me one reason why I should permit you to demand support for my explanation.Right now, judging by your standards of debate, Coyote and I are perfectly within our rights to call all your attacks on ToE red herrings, and to respond to you with pictures of fish until you present evidence that your Explanation for the Cambrian Explosion is correct.

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-BluejayDarwin loves you.

Hi, AlphaOmegakid. You’re the one who’s asking us to alter our interpretation of the rest of the fossil record that we do know to accomodate one portion that you think is problematic. My argument is an extrapolation of a well-documented pattern into an area that isn't as well-documented. On the other hand,your argument is...Actually, wait, what is your argument again?----- Come to think of it, I don't see much of a reference to anything substantive. Like always, you’ve taken up a vague position that could be consistent with a hundred explanations (yes, flooding is consistent with evolution and even uniformitarianism!!), and you've contented yourself to just sit back and criticize us without taking your turn in the hot seat.----- So, if you weren't arguing that the Flood is responsible for the Cambrian Explosion, what did you expect to gain by mentioning flooding in the post before? Doesn't that constitute a... But, thank you for actually responding this time.Now, what is your Explanation for the Cambrian Explosion?State it clearly for us: we want a chance to be hidden theory snipers, too.-----P.S. Anything else to say about invertebrates and hard parts?

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-BluejayDarwin loves you.

Hi, Coyote. Hey! Don't go knocking my longest-running thread at EvC. I finally started a topic that people actually wanted to talk about, and you're calling it "meaningless." Thanks, dude. ----- That's the biggest problem with the opposition, I think. "Sudden appearance" at one point in the fossil record doesn't help them much when it happens again several more times in the fossil record. It would only help their case if everything appeared at once. They would need dinosaurs, trilobites, ferns, Penicilium, mammals and frogs, all suddenly popping into existence in one stratum, and nothing new coming up after that.Anything short of that is proof of evolution, to whatever degree. They can quibble and complain, but, in the end, they have to realize, sooner or later, that natural history isn't evolution, so even a magical Cambrian Explosion doesn't overturn ToE.I just had an epiphany! They've been going about it all wrong! AOkid's particular flavor of creationist has been trying to debunk evolution by debunking natural history, when, really, they have to do it the other way around. They have to prove that ToE is false before they can disprove evolutionary natural history. I wonder if any of them realizes this.Edited by Bluejay, : Wording

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-BluejayDarwin loves you.