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The Cambrian and Precambrian life appear suddenly

And without any evidence of evolution. It's the thing that disproves the theory of evolution. Even Darwin admitted that. Why do people still believe. Religion and God aside
ArishMell · 70-79, M
It does not disprove evolution at all, even if was hard to square with Darwin's theory in his time.

Life did [i]not [/i]appear suddenly but advanced in variety from existing forms very rapidly, i.e. within a relatively few million years.

Why do some people so desperately want to believe evolution "wrong"?
Axeroberts · 56-60, M
@ArishMell i think it is funny how people hold on to a 150 year old theory based on believing the cell was a blob.
ArishMell · 70-79, M
@Axeroberts Even funnier is hanging onto a notion invented by no-one knows who, getting for twenty times as long ago...

As for a cell being a blob, well, it is. Just a tiny protein bag of gel with a DNA and other molecules inside it.

I notice you did not answer my question so assume you don't know what motivates creationists either.
Axeroberts · 56-60, M
@ArishMell i am not a creationist at all. And do some research. The cell is a very complex structure. Nothing like you just described. But remember there are 3.4 billion base pairs of DNA. To me random mutations which actually degrade things is surely not the answer.
Wrong.

[quote]... But over the past several years, discoveries have begun to yield some tantalizing clues about the end of the Ediacaran. Evidence gathered from the Namibian reefs and other sites suggests that earlier theories were overly simplistic — that the Cambrian explosion actually emerged out of a complex interplay between small environmental changes that triggered major evolutionary developments.

Some scientists now think that a small, perhaps temporary, increase in oxygen suddenly crossed an ecological threshold, enabling the emergence of predators. The rise of carnivory would have set off an evolutionary arms race that led to the burst of complex body types and behaviours that fill the oceans today. “This is the most significant event in Earth evolution,” says Guy Narbonne, a palaeobiologist at Queen's University in Kingston, Canada. “The advent of pervasive carnivory, made possible by oxygenation, is likely to have been a major trigger.” [/quote]

But wait! There's more!!
[quote] Sperling has looked for insights into Ediacaran oceans by studying oxygen-depleted regions in modern seas around the globe. He suggests that biologists have conventionally taken the wrong approach to thinking about how oxygen shaped animal evolution. By pooling and analysing previously published data with some of his own, he found that tiny worms survive in areas of the sea floor where oxygen levels are incredibly low — less than 0.5% of average global sea-surface concentrations. Food webs in these oxygen-poor environments are simple, and the animals feed directly on microbes. In places where sea-floor oxygen levels are a bit higher — about 0.5–3% of concentrations at the sea surface — animals are more abundant but their food webs remain limited: the animals still feed on microbes rather than on each other. But around somewhere between 3% and 10% oxygen levels, predators emerge and start to consume other animals.

The implications of this finding for evolution are profound, Sperling says.The modest oxygen rise that he thinks may have occurred just before the Cambrian would have been enough to trigger a big change. “If oxygen levels were 3% and they rose past that 10% threshold, that would have had a huge influence on early animal evolution,” he says. “There's just so much in animal ecology, lifestyle and body size that seems to change so dramatically through those levels.”

The gradual emergence of predators, driven by a small rise in oxygen, would have meant trouble for Ediacaran animals that lacked obvious defences. “You're looking at soft-bodied, mostly immobile forms that probably lived their lives by absorbing nutrients through their skin,” says Narbonne.

. . .

The rise of predation at this time put large, sedentary Ediacaran animals at a big disadvantage. “Sitting around doing nothing becomes a liability,” says Narbonne.

The moment of transition from the Ediacaran to the Cambrian world is recorded in a series of stone outcrops rounded by ancient glaciers on the south edge of Newfoundland. Below that boundary are impressions left by quilted Ediacaran animals, the last such fossils recorded on Earth. And just 1.2 meters above them, the grey siltstone holds trails of scratch marks, thought to have been made by animals with exoskeletons, walking on jointed legs — the earliest evidence of arthropods in Earth's history.

No one knows how much time passed in that intervening rock — maybe as little as a few centuries or millennia, says Narbonne. But during that short span, the soft-bodied, stationary Ediacaran fauna suddenly disappeared, driven to extinction by predators, he suggests.

Narbonne has closely studied the few fauna that survived this transition, and his findings suggest that some of them had acquired new, more complex types of behaviour. The best clues come from traces left by peaceful, wormlike animals that grazed on the microbial mat. Early trails from about 555 million years ago meander and criss-cross haphazardly, indicating a poorly developed nervous system that was unable to sense or react to other grazers nearby — let alone predators. But at the end of the Ediacaran and into the early Cambrian, the trails become more sophisticated: creatures carved tighter turns and ploughed closely spaced, parallel lines through the sediments. In some cases, a curvy feeding trail abruptly transitions into a straight line, which Narbonne interprets as potential evidence of the grazer evading a predator. [/quote]

There are many more details regarding the changes from the Ediacaran to the Cambrian era. But the overall point is that your claim, "without any evidence of evolution," is dead wrong. There's a wealth of evidence about the transition that led to the Cambrian "explosion."
Iwantyourhotwife · 22-25
@ElwoodBlues I have some criticisms and questions after reading the text you provided.


[quote]that the Cambrian explosion actually emerged out of a [b]complex interplay between small environmental changes that triggered major evolutionary developments[/b][/quote]
Reading and digesting this basically means

"They just evolved that hard" to fit evolution into that space
Major as in they just literally mutated that hard, right?

[quote]Some scientists now think that a small, perhaps temporary, increase in oxygen [b]suddenly crossed an ecological threshold, enabling the emergence of predators[/b].[/quote]
A tantamount statement here

Pretty much saying oxygen caused major new evolutions. But over how long? How rapidly? And is this really a feasible explanation? Especially for gradualism?
The gradualism stated right after?
[quote]The gradual emergence of predators[/quote]

How can these ideas reconcile?

And why does oxygen mean a full emetgence of predators? Suppose oxygen was present in 50% abundance. What evolutionary push does it supply to a bodily function? Arguing one develops adaptations to oxygen differs to digestion. And on top of it comes a specific rework to organs to help attain predatory features. Is the argument [b]really[/b] that oxygen guided the DNA and bodily structure? Which is arguably unguided according to generic evolutionary beliefs, demonstrated to being the background sentinent in this very source, too?

This is a serious rationalization that is missing from even the most widely accepted descriptors of that time period. Why promote this guesswork? Or posit these assertions as evidence? .-.

Furthermore, this language from the source dismisses evidence and thought:
[quote]The implications of this finding for evolution are profound, Sperling says. [/quote]
This was merely an assertion with no backing. (The whole way through)

[quote]The modest oxygen rise that he thinks may have occurred just before the Cambrian would have been enough to trigger a big change[/quote]
Why repeat this with no backing? What change? Claims like this need to be made concrete and tied to the evolution. Why is this possibly true and considered evidence?



TL;DR
If all of these questions seem rather overwhelming, the aim is to tie gradualism to punctuated equilibrium (which are mutually exclusive and opposites, with fossil records supporting the latter over the former). Why argue for gradualism at all while the source literally demonstrates and suggests against gradualism? So many people blindly argue for this because of it popularity from Darwin. Could this be more of that?
crownedwithlaurel97 · 26-30, F
have you ever read a single research article about the history of life? i’m just curious
Axeroberts · 56-60, M
@crownedwithlaurel97 yes. And it all shows different phyla showing up without anything gradual. Not to mention neo-darwinism which looks at the dna evidence. Which again shows no evidence
Livingwell · 61-69, M
@Axeroberts If you do not see the gradual emergence of life with all the DNA sequencing they have presented, then you're not reading carefully. There is constant research and testing of fossils to construct various paths of animals, plants, etc to understand why one went extinct and another didn't, environments, etc. As for God, it's not an either or discussion. Life can be designed to follow a pattern and not require a deity to micromanage it's evolution and support diversity.
Axeroberts · 56-60, M
@Livingwell firstly I said God aside. And Flagellum disproves everything you said
Those two large areas of life in fact left in Normas amounts of data. Showing us the long slow g
but occasionally jerky process of evolution.
The evidence is copious. Darwin knew nothing of these errors other than the fossils they produced.
Why do people still believe what? Religion? If you’re asking why do people still believe in evolution is because it is an ever-growing field full of vast amounts of data easy to produce experiments showing you just how quickly organisms can evolve. There are plenty of true experts on YouTube, you can tell they’re good because they don’t have 1 billion followers but the people who tell you it’s all crazy where the aliens did it have that large audience. PBS, has done a number of really good videos many of which are on YouTube I think you’ll like it!
JimboSaturn · 51-55, M
Don't theist always use the argument "the absence of evidence is not evidence of absence?"
Axeroberts · 56-60, M
@JimboSaturn that might be true but I said that aside. I think most people see life like a tree where everything stems from the trunk. But I see life as blades of grass. Each one individual and developing on their own. But most people believe that one thing kept mutating. This doesn't make logical sense. Unfortunately no one knows for sure
JimboSaturn · 51-55, M
@Axeroberts What doesn't make sense about natural selection through adaptation over great periods of time? We are very sure evolution is the process that developed all life. Things mutating makes perfect sense and explains everything perfectly in the natural world. Only religious literalists don't believe in evolution.
Axeroberts · 56-60, M
@JimboSaturn here is what some scientists say about the flagellar motor. I believe evolution to a point but not where one specie changes to another
[quote] It is perhaps not surprising then that such complexity and technology has been hijacked for use as proof, via intelligent design,[/quote]
Iwantyourhotwife · 22-25
Darwinism has issues with the fossil record. It is well known for real readers and students of evolution. But evolution is change over time. Humans demonstrate adaptation and so many animals do.

Speaking to the current fossil record, do you deny or accept that the fossils clearly demonstrate massive differences between the fossilized skeletons and the modern day living creatures?

And that if those are truly previously living, they are not like modern living animals today? Because I'm with you if you're against this religious stance for Darwinian evolution. However, you can see clear differences, right? No matter [b]how[/b] it got there?
Because this would be why people adopt a belief in evolution. General evolution (considering the gossils as past living creatures) clearly would conclude that massive changes over time may have occurred, thus birthing the evolutionary core belief and models to explain it, Darwin being just another white dude giving it his go
jackieash · 26-30
It didn;t just "appear suddenly". It' proves that life like that was buried further in to the Earth than the creatures that came after them.

You could turn that statement right round; if god made fossils to test the faith of christians, why has god only just provided fossils of cambrian and pre cambrian life?
HannahSky · F
Another nut job
deadgerbil · 22-25
Amen brother
caesar7 · 61-69, M
People continue to believe in evolution because it is supported by a wealth of scientific evidence, is widely accepted within the scientific community, and has practical applications in various fields. It provides a coherent and powerful framework for understanding the diversity of life on Earth.
JimboSaturn · 51-55, M
@caesar7 This is a most sensible answer. We may not have all the pieces of the puzzle, but evolution makes all biology make sense.
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Axeroberts · 56-60, M
@Emosaur there is proof that life spontaneously came into existence without a past. Or did life always exist?

 
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