Uncommon Descent Serving The Intelligent Design Community

Pointer to design?: Shell guys ate each other in the Cambrian seas, but they had to eat something, didn’t they?

Share
Facebook
Twitter
LinkedIn
Flipboard
Print
Email

The fossil bore holes into victims’ shell, and subsequent repair attempts, tell a curious story.

So says physicist David Tyler here:

Darwinian concepts of the struggle for survival have featured strongly in attempts to explain the Cambrian Explosion. However, although predator-prey roles are to be found, the evidence linking these with adaptive change is lacking. Last December, an alternative ecological framework for interpreting this part of the fossil record was discussed (go here for the 4th in the series). The authors introduce their paper by pointing out the importance of this issue in the minds of evolutionary biologists, but then they go on to show evidence that for shell-crushing predation, this selection force was non-existent before Stage 4 of the Lower Cambrian. Some re-evaluation of drivers affecting the Cambrian Explosion is therefore needed.

See, what’s yet to be established is whether the responses were coded in advance, as opposed to a fundamentally new system evolving accidentally and quickly.

Comments

Leave a Reply