The Cambrian Explosion,
what a commotion,
for long-established theories
on how things should occur.
Sudden emergence,
animal insurgence,
novel parts and body plans,
no ancestry we’re sure.
Five fifty million years ago,
a faunal troupe did truly show,
what all the fossil experts know,
“Biology’s Big Bang”.
No intermediates came before,
a true explosion to the core,
those trilobites we can’t ignore,
a self-assertive gang.
With all the complex novelty,
of body plan disparity,
with legs to walk and eyes to see
exquisitely designed.
From what we know we can infer,
a mindful manufacturer,
from what we’ve seen we can concur,
intelligent the mind.
Intelligent the mind that made,
this ‘multi-cell’lar’ cavalcade,
so unperturbed and clearly laid,
all so that man could see.
The informational design,
this DNA of yours and mine,
that specifies the bottom line
of how they came to be.
So many proteins functions new,
in single cells there’d been so few,
but now with novel tasks to do,
new proteins were in need.
With proteins novel cells came too,
all specialized for tasks to do,
from these new cells new tissues grew,
all function’lly decreed.
And all of this in shortest time,
five million years it took to climb,
from simple cell to form sublime,
the body plans attest.
The Cambrian lives as testament,
a firmly standing monument,
preplanned with care and full intent,
designing at its best.
The gradualistic undertone,
so steadfast held as fact, was shown
to be so clearly challenge prone,
so theories we revise.
From Cambrian’s loft we plainly see,
a suddenness, immediacy,
no gradual change such fallacy,
the gradualist’s demise.