From Part II of the “Precambrian House of Cards”: Even Evans et al. (2021) themselves admit that “phylogenetic affinities for most of the Ediacara Biota remain enigmatic” and say that “Many Ediacara taxa may represent stem lineages of animal phyla but their diagnostic characters either were not preserved or had not yet evolved.” Hear, hear. Read More…
Ediacaran
We are similar to Ediacaran animals? Well, that’s stasis for you!
The similarity doesn’t sound convincing but then Darwinian narratives don’t need to sound convincing; they just need to sound comforting to Darwinians.
Researchers: 635 million-year-old fossil helped the planet recover from an ice age
In short, complex life got started even earlier than we had thought, which leaves even less time for unguided, Darwinian evolution.
New Ediacaran fossils, 570-560 mya, make the picture clearer
Uppsala University: The immense variability of microfossils has convinced the researchers that the complexity of life in that period must have been greater than has hitherto been known.
Precambrian creature scrunches the origin of life even further
This “revolutionary animal” is not that much like the Cambrian creatures so far found but the big question is, how did life explode so quickly if it was only by chance? Why not just give up on that idea and study the creature for what it is?
Gunter Bechly dismisses the Darwinian explain-away of the Cambrian fossil record
Paleontologist Gunter Bechly looks at the claim that the Cambrian animals evolved from a long train of ancestors who somehow all just disappeared without a trace and finds it, well, unconvincing:
550 million-year-old digestive tract more like worm than coral
It’s the oldest found to date.
Ediacaran life contrasted with Cambrian life to shape Darwinian tale
In reality, we don’t know that earlier Ediacarans didn’t “evolve” the ability to form shells or skeletons. True, we haven’t found any yet. But some of us can’t help remembering the “bombshell” of Neanderthal art. Why was it a bombshell? Because Darwinians had staked a claim on the idea that Neanderthals couldn’t “do” art. This is likely just an another attempt to shape the history of life as a Darwinian fairytale.
Key points in plant evolution featured “fundamental genomic novelties”
Researchers: “This approach reveals an unprecedented level of fundamental genomic novelties in two nodes related to the origin of land plants: the first in the origin of streptophytes during the Ediacaran and another in the ancestor of land plants in the Ordovician.” Stuck for what to call this, some of us would call it creationism.
Researchers: Animal embryos evolved before animals
Well, now that Zhu mentions it, hadn’t we better be sure that there are no adult stages before we make such dramatic claims? Otherwise, what we really have is another early Ediacaran complex animal which, while a marvellous find, is not the one Darwinians would be hoping for.
New Scientist tries to undermine Cambrian explosion
The Ediacaran creatures are fascinating predecessors to be sure. They will likely turn out to be explosions of life, just like the Cambrian, but often not clearly related to it.
The worm that was making those tracks 551–539 million years ago may be found
The claim that the worm challenges the Cambrian explosion which followed this Ediacaran period is weird because we knew there were worms in the Ediacaran on account of the tracks (and comb jellies too) but the explosion of multi-faceted life in the Cambrian is a unique event in any case.
Gunter Bechly: Ediacaran fossil paper is “junk science”
Dickinsonia, he says, is not an animal.
Researchers: Dickinsonia (571–541 mya) could have had mouth and guts
Associate Professor Jochen Brocks commented, “These fossils comprise our best window into earliest animal evolution and are the key to understanding our own deep origins.” Yes, in the sense that sudden emergence rather than a long, slow Darwinian process seems more likely all the time.
Oldest animal turns out to be 40 million years older than 558 mya
MOVE over, Dickinsonia. This 558-million-year-old creature was named the earliest known animal last year, but New Scientist can now exclusively reveal one that existed even earlier – by more than 40 million years. (paywall) Graham Lawton, “Exclusive: 600-million-year old blobs are earliest animals ever found” at New Scientist Note: They are described at New Scientist Read More…