How does the Cambrian explosion (Biology's "Big Bang") fit in with evolution?

Question

"A new paper by one of the world’s leading paleontologists argues that the Cambrian explosion-"biology’s big bang"-was a real event. Around 540 million years ago, between 50% and 80% of all animal phyla to ever exist appeared explosively over a short period of time (less than 5 million years). The Cambrian explosion stands as one of the biggest enigmas facing the evolutionary paradigm. On the other hand, biology’s big bang serves as powerful evidence for the Creator’s intervention in life’s history. Some evolutionary biologists seek to avoid the troubling consequences of the Cambrian explosion by arguing that it never occurred; they maintain that it is an artifact of an incomplete fossil record. But in the face of this challenge, Simon Conway Morris presents new evidence maintaining that the Cambrian explosion was indeed a real event."

Evolutionists, how can this be explained? Young earth creationists, is the age of the earth as determined by scientists unreliable? Why?

Sources:

Simon Conway Morris, "Darwin’s Dilemma: The Realities of the Cambrian ‘Explosion’," Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B 361 (2006): 1069-83.

Reasons.org

Just as a side note, I am not on either side, so don't go attacking me, k? ^_~

Much love.

Answer 1

First off, don't be dismayed if science does not have a definitive answer at this point in time. There was a time when people did not know the world is round, but that did not make the world flat ;-)

Pre-cambrian life was notably soft-structured. Few if any hard bits, like shells or skeletons. More like slugs and sea pens.

Some were experimenting with forming solid surfaces, but nothing like what came with the Cambrian.

In the Cambrian we got lots of calcium-coated critters. corals, molluscs, sponges, echinoderms, etc.

Here's the problem: soft-bodied animals (Pre-Cambrian) do -not- leave fossils. If you're lucky, they leave impressions under very unusual conditions involving very fine silt, etc.

Meanwhile, animals with a calcium crust (Cambrian), like a clam, fossilizes. It becomes a mineral-filled rock which, if found, shows you the shape of the original animal.

So those arguing that the ancestors to Cambrian animals were always there, but that until the Cambrian they had soft-bodies only, no shell, can legitimately claim that there may be a gap in the fossil record.

Punctuated Equilibrium (a theory in Evolution) suggests that an isolated population of a species discovered an unexploited environment and through natural selection a number of new species split off from the original population. One species becomes five species, or ten...

Do this with a few different species, and you can start with five species but end up with forty or fifty species.

The process of speciation slows down as the new environment becomes inhabited with life forms capable of exploiting it.

So by this theory, one doesn't need many original species to generate a large number of new species exploiting a newly found environment.

In neither case does the magic intervention of a Creator-God seem appropriate. By the time of the Cambrian, Life was about 3 billion years old. The most significant event crossing the Pre-Cambrian/Cambrian border seems to be the start of the wholesale use of calcium compounds to form protective coatings and/or stiffening rods.

In time, with more research and more discoveries, the full answer will be known.

As for the age of the Earth being reliable, unless God cheats when it comes to radioactive decay, the answer is yes, the planet is around 4 billion years old. The oldest solid rock is about 3.7 billion years old.

Answer 2

Well, I'm now not a biologist, however a couple of matters arise to me as I learn your query. -The Cambrian was once now not "a pair million years." Evidence turns out to position the period at potentially so long as 70 to ninety million years...that's hardly ever the blink of an eye fixed. -I realize that precise chemical markers point out that the atmosphere converted significantly on the opening of the Cambrian, so it sort of feels that there will have been a mass extinction of pre-Cambrian organisms, which could undoubtedly furnish a enormous quantity of environmental niches to fill - encouraging diversification of species. -Some proof shows that there will have been a quantity of precursor species from which Cambrian organisms advanced. Your argument approximately the unlikelihood of DNA "randomly and unintentionally" evolving into humanity looks to have the method backwards - matters do not evolve closer to a few pre-observed type. To declare that this disproves evolution is foolish. It's now not not likely that organisms randomly and unintentionally advanced into folks - it is flawlessly most probably, due to the fact that that is what occurred. Your "ninety nine.999998% of the entire evolution on the planet" determine is solely ridiculous - what's your supply for this wild exaggeration? Have you ever learn some thing rather than creationist assets on your "study"?

Answer 3

There were a lot of empty niches to be filled at the time. It makes sense that the creation of phyla would be rapid then.

Simon Conway Morris is not an anti-Evolutionist, by the way.

Answer 4

you lost me here im sorry im just a very stupid atheist, so your asking me as an evolutionist to explain to you why a bunch of life sprung out of "nowhere" 54 million years ago, so like what the other scientists said about an imcomplete fossil record, doesnt that make sense

just go ahead and give best answer to who ever quotes genesis 1.26-27 or 2.7

Answer 5

In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. PERIOD.

How many millions of years that took the Bible doesn't say.

But afterwards God separated the waters from the land
and started making vegetation and animals, etc.

Answer 6

1. I neither know or care to know how old the Earth is.
2. The Big Bang theory is this: God said it and Bang! It happened.

Answer 7

Actually, your time frame is a little bit off... it's more like 30 - to - 60 million years.

Answer 8

We don't know how long God's creative days were
We only know how long man has been on the earth.
God's days are much different than ours remember he lives forever

Answer 9

Like a round peg in a round hole.
Tammi Dee

Answer 10

It is just one more Broken part of the "THEORY" that is propped up by the Religion of Darwinism