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Ediacaran life contrasted with Cambrian life to shape Darwinian tale

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Note the way Darwinism shapes this snippet from a story of events from 635 million to 541 million years ago:

The Ediacaran fossils herald a watershed moment in the history of Earth – for the previous four billion years, the oceans had been the preserve of single-celled microbes, yet suddenly they were teeming with new complex life. And what strange life it was. The creatures look nothing like anything seen today.

Some, like the rangeomorphs resembled giant leafy ferns. Others had a bush, or cabbage-like appearance. Many looked like shapeless sacs, or thin, quilted pillows, while others bore a resemblance to enormous sea pens.

“Most Ediacarans are soft bodied and a bit squidgy,” says Simon Darroch, a paleontologist at Vanderbilt University in Tennessee. “The ability to form shells or skeletons didn’t evolve until the end of the Ediacaran period.”

Jasmin Fox-Skelly, “What the earliest life on Earth looked like” at BBC Future

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. Remember, in any Darwinian scheme, someone must be the subhuman. And, they swear, he MUST be back there somewhere…

Possibly, Ediacaran life forms had not evolved the ability to form shells. Alternatively, shells may have been possible but not needed in their environment. Did any Ediacarans have teeth or claws, for example?

The past can be as tricky as the future. Often, it is just as unknown. And Darwinian thinking, relying on Darwinism’s status as a Big Theory for interpreting reality, is always running ahead of the available facts.

Paper. (paywall)

See also: The Science Fictions series at your fingertips – origin of life What we do and don’t know about the origin of life.

Comments
of note:
Australian Multicellular Fossils Point to Life On Land, Not at Sea, Geologist Proposes - Dec. 12, 2012 Excerpt: Ediacaran fossils, he said, represent "an independent evolutionary radiation of life on land that preceded by at least 20 million years the Cambrian evolutionary explosion of animals in the sea." Increased chemical weathering by large organisms on land may have been needed to fuel the demand of nutrient elements by Cambrian animals. Independent discoveries of Cambrian fossils comparable with Ediacaran ones is evidence, he said, that even in the Cambrian, more than 500 million years ago, life on land may have been larger and more complex than life in the sea. Retallack leaves open the possibility that some Ediacaran fossils found elsewhere in the world may not be land-based in origin, writing in his conclusion that the many different kinds of these fossils need to be tested and re-evaluated. "The key evidence for this new view is that the beds immediately below the cover sandstones in which they are preserved were fossil soils," he said. "In other words the fossils were covered by sand in life position at the top of the soils in which they grew. In addition, frost features and chemical composition of the fossil soils are evidence that they grew in cold dry soils, like lichens in tundra today, rather than in tropical marine lagoons." http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/12/121212134050.htm Ediacarans Not Related to Cambrian Animals - December 16, 2012 Excerpt: “These fossils have been a first-class scientific mystery,” he said. “They are the oldest large multicellular fossils. They lived immediately before the Cambrian evolutionary explosion that gave rise to familiar modern groups of animals.”,, If not sea creatures, what are they? Retallack suggested they could be “lichens, other microbial consortia, fungal fruiting bodies, slime molds, flanged pedestals of biological soil crusts, and even casts of needle ice.” In the paper and the press release, he had very little to say about evolution, except that the Ediacarans represent “an independent evolutionary radiation of life on land that preceded by at least 20 million years the Cambrian evolutionary explosion of animals in the sea.” http://crev.info/2012/12/ediacarans-not-related-to-cambrian-animals/ Ediacaran biota - Lichen hypothesis Excerpt: Greg Retallack's hypothesis that Ediacaran organisms were lichens[90][91] has been controversial.[92][93] He argues that the fossils are not as squashed as known fossil jellyfish, and their relief is closer to compressed woody branches whose compaction can be estimated as compressed cylinders. He points out the chitinous walls of lichen colonies would provide a similar resistance to compaction, and claims the large size of the organisms (up to 1.5 metres long, far larger than any of the preserved burrows) also hints against classification with animals. Thin sections of Ediacaran fossils show lichen-like compartments and hypha-like wisps of ferruginized clay.[89] Finally, Ediacaran fossils from classic localities of the Flinders Ranges have been found in growth position within red calcareous and gypsiferous paleosols, interpreted as well-drained temperate desert soils.[91][94] Such habitats limit interpretive options for fractal Ediacaran fossils such as Dickinsonia to lichenised or unlichenised fungi, but other Ediacaran fossils could have been slime moulds or microbial colonies. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ediacaran_biota#Lichen_hypothesis
also of note:
Early Life in Death Valley - April 24, 2014 Excerpt: In 2009, Knauth and Martin Kennedy of the University of California, Riverside, shocked their more conservative colleagues with a meta-analysis of thousands of geochemical records from around the planet. They reported additional evidence that a land-based explosion of photosynthesizing algae, mosses, fungi and other organisms was likely to have greened the continents and facilitated the global expansion of multicellular life (including animals) as long ago as 850 million years ago,,, This idea is still quite controversial. Some paleoscientists who agree with Knauth that Precambrian lands were green with microbiota do not believe that early animals, or their precursors, were necessarily lurking in those bacterial jungles. “It is unlikely that animals evolved on land prior to the Cambrian explosion,” Awramik said, noting that Knauth’s theory is not supported by hard fossil evidence. https://www.simonsfoundation.org/quanta/20140424-early-life-in-death-valley/ "In July (2018), scientists announced that they had uncovered the earliest evidence of terrestrial life on Earth. “This work represents the oldest and least ambiguous work that we have so far that life existed on land already 3.2 billion years ago,” Kurt Konhauser, a professor of earth and atmospheric sciences at the University of Alberta in Canada https://uncommondescent.com/evolution/the-scientist-life-on-land-half-a-billion-years-older-than-thought-is-a-top-2018-story/ Earth’s earliest non-marine eukaryotes - April 2011 Excerpt: They offer direct evidence of eukaryotes living in freshwater aquatic and subaerially exposed habitats during the Proterozoic era. The apparent dominance of eukaryotes in non-marine settings by 1?Gyr ago indicates that eukaryotic evolution on land may have commenced far earlier than previously thought. http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v473/n7348/full/nature09943.html Greening of the Earth pushed way back in time - July 22, 2013 Excerpt: Conventional scientific wisdom has it that plants and other creatures have only lived on land for about 500 million years, but a new study is pointing to evidence for life on land that is four times as old -- at 2.2 billion years ago and almost half way back to the inception of the planet.,,, ,,,these new fossils set a new and earlier benchmark for the greening of the land," http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/07/130722141548.htm Life took hold on land 300 million years earlier than thought - November 8, 2016 Excerpt: The composition of the rock, the shape of the crystals, and the layering visible in the field all indicate that the studied rock sequence was derived from an ancient soil profile; this so-called paleosol developed on a river flood plain 3.22 billion years ago.,,, Based on this evidence, the scientists conclude in their publication in the journal Geology that they found evidence for biological activity on land at this very early date. Their research pushes back the date for the oldest evidence of life on land to some 300 million years earlier than previously documented. https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/11/161108090052.htm
Verses:
Genesis 1:11 Then God said, “Let the land produce vegetation:,,, Genesis 1:20 And God said, “Let the water teem with living creatures,,,,
bornagain77
January 21, 2020
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