The Cambrian Explosion

[achilles12604]

Besides the apologist answer that God was responsible for this phenomina by some method, does secular science have a theory as to the cause of this sudden explosion of new life all at once? (Remember I do not fall for that God of Gaps theory)

I am looking for science answer to this mystery. Anyone care to enlighten me?

[otseng]

Do you mean Evolutionists have failed to explain the Cambrian Explosion? What explanations (other than mine above!) have you heard of and dismissed?

Let's investigate those. Please present the evolutionist explanations and how it fits in with the data.

I don't think that's a particularly accurate way to portray the spread of complexity over time. As I mentioned, the Cambrian saw a "gear change" when hard body parts became common, prior to this we should expect an under-representation in the fossil record. But I think there's a useful model that most of us are familiar with: Moore's Law. If we accept animals as examples of natural technology (can we argue that they are not?) then we should not be surprised to see complexity exponentiating.

I don't see how Moore's law explains the Cambrian Explosion.

"Moore's Law, states that the number of transistors on a chip doubles about every two years"
http://www.intel.com/technology/mooreslaw/index.htm

Further, complexity basically only arose during the Cambrian Explosion. If Moore's law was truly applicable, why would life complexity basically come to a close afterwards? Why would "Moore's law" only apply for 50 million years? What happened to "Moore's law" 500 million years afterward? What would be the "transistors" that would have been doubling every two years?

[QED]

Just because religious interpreters throughout the ages have refused to open their eyes to science does not negate that they can coexist. Many parts of the bible were written in poetic form, not to be taken litterally but rather as symbolism or metaphores for deeper truths.

Yes but earlier you said:

We see this pattern several times throughout creation and incidentally it occurs with similar creatures as mentioned in the creation account which was written by people with absolutly ZERO knowledge of anything remotely scientific. This coincidence is pretty amazing. To me anyway. Ya'll make up your own minds if this is wierd to you.

I worry that people cherry-pick these "coincidences" and use them to bolster their prior convictions. I personally think it's the omissions rather than the inclusions that we should be looking at to see if they really were onto something. The omission of some 3 billion years of atmospheric transformation from the poetry rather spoils the illusion for me at any rate.

[Goat]

Do you mean Evolutionists have failed to explain the Cambrian Explosion? What explanations (other than mine above!) have you heard of and dismissed?

Let's investigate those. Please present the evolutionist explanations and how it fits in with the data.

I don't think that's a particularly accurate way to portray the spread of complexity over time. As I mentioned, the Cambrian saw a "gear change" when hard body parts became common, prior to this we should expect an under-representation in the fossil record. But I think there's a useful model that most of us are familiar with: Moore's Law. If we accept animals as examples of natural technology (can we argue that they are not?) then we should not be surprised to see complexity exponentiating.

I don't see how Moore's law explains the Cambrian Explosion.

"Moore's Law, states that the number of transistors on a chip doubles about every two years"
http://www.intel.com/technology/mooreslaw/index.htm

Further, complexity basically only arose during the Cambrian Explosion. If Moore's law was truly applicable, why would life complexity basically come to a close afterwards? Why would "Moore's law" only apply for 50 million years? What happened to "Moore's law" 500 million years afterward? What would be the "transistors" that would have been doubling every two years?

You are assuming that complexity only arose during the Cambrian Explosion. That isn't what happened. What happened is that the percentage of life that had 'hard' parts that could fossilize increased
drastically. We have fossils from before the Cambrian explosion, but because of the fact that life did not have hard body parts, it was a lot rarer for it to fossilize.

As for common decent, what is your understanding of the evidence for common decent, and how do you relate it to the cambrian explosion? How
do you think they relate? The evidence for the cambrian explosion and the evidence for common descent are two different things. I want to understand how you are associating them, and what your understanding of both those peices of the puzzle are before responding.

[QED]

Do you mean Evolutionists have failed to explain the Cambrian Explosion? What explanations (other than mine above!) have you heard of and dismissed?

Let's investigate those. Please present the evolutionist explanations and how it fits in with the data.

Hey, I asked you first

I don't see how Moore's law explains the Cambrian Explosion.

"Moore's Law, states that the number of transistors on a chip doubles about every two years"
http://www.intel.com/technology/mooreslaw/index.htm

Further, complexity basically only arose during the Cambrian Explosion. If Moore's law was truly applicable, why would life complexity basically come to a close afterwards? Why would "Moore's law" only apply for 50 million years? What happened to "Moore's law" 500 million years afterward? What would be the "transistors" that would have been doubling every two years?

OK, it's not that animals are transistors. Kurzweil was talking more about technology in general. I also mentioned the growth patterns seen in human technology. It's more a matter of gaining an increasing number of tricks in natural selections "bag of tricks" with each minor breakthrough speeding the transition to the next. This plots an exponential (which I mentioned can look like an explosion from a distance). Now I'm not following any particular lead here, it's more a question of how, when I look at phenomena like these early animals, I identify them with more familiar things like vintage aircraft, cars, radios, etc.

[Standard disclaimer: Yes, men designed these things but natural selection is a designer too, so many similarities are bound to exist]

Of course we have other triggers for rapid growth, like extinction. Any vacant space will rapidly be filled, but as I mentioned, when competition isn't too hot a wider range of solutions can be supported. This to me is a dead-ringer for the diversity seen in the Cambrian. It could be extinction of some previous dynasty -- or it could be the enabling effects brought about by new developments in natural technology. This seems more likely to me and should be expected when things like hard body parts, teeth, jaws etc. first make it on the scene.

The reason these trends don't go on and on is because once everything "has teeth" there's no where to go -- until the next big breakthrough. We see this same sort of punctuated equilibrium in our own technological developments -- the rapid growth of early incandescent lighting stabilised into a standard lasting to the present day. If LED's hadn't been invented we might still be screwing tungsten lamps into Edison Screw sockets in the year 3006. But now we're starting out on a new slope.

[Chem]

Of course we have other triggers for rapid growth, like extinction. Any vacant space will rapidly be filled, but as I mentioned, when competition isn't too hot a wider range of solutions can be supported.

A good example being the presence of the Terror birds in S. America after the KT boundry (about 65 to 2.5 million years) and what occured then?-North and South America joined up leading to competition between cats such as the sabre tooth and jaguar and these carnivorous birds, with the cats being the eventual victors (evoluntionary speaking).
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news ... rds_2.html
for example.

[QED]

Neat bird Chem -- imagine a your cat dragging one of them into your cave

Now I'm quite intrigued by the interest that creationists would have in the Cambrian. The very period is marked by it's own unique collection of animal types and sizes. Nothing in these early waters was much larger than a few feet -- life simply hadn't got this far yet on the planet. If I understand the creationist interpretation then all shapes and sizes representing animals past and present should be represented among this particular "explosion". How come we just don't see this sort of mix?

I see that there's now research showing that plants developed on land eariler than thought. That might be a boost for the creation theory but the research team studies "molecular clocks" in living species looking at the accumulation of mutations in genes, allowing the relative times of origin of each species to be estimated. I can't see how this works if all species originated at once.

[otseng]

What happened is that the percentage of life that had 'hard' parts that could fossilize increased
drastically. We have fossils from before the Cambrian explosion, but because of the fact that life did not have hard body parts, it was a lot rarer for it to fossilize.

Interesting, and common, theory, but I find it unsupportable.

For instance, we find jellyfish fossils in the Cambrian layer.

"These jellyfish are not just large for the Cambrian, but are the largest jellyfish in the entire fossil record. What is also of interest is that they were among the largest two types of predators in the Cambrian."

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/1786505.stm

So, obviously a lack of hard parts doesn't prevent it from being fossilized.

As for common decent, what is your understanding of the evidence for common decent, and how do you relate it to the cambrian explosion? How
do you think they relate? The evidence for the cambrian explosion and the evidence for common descent are two different things. I want to understand how you are associating them, and what your understanding of both those peices of the puzzle are before responding.

As I understand Common Descent, it basically predicts a tree of life. It started as a single branch at the bottom (the first cell) and then bifurcates up as new species evolve. The end result would be a single tree with a bunch of branches on it. The top branches would be the extant lifeforms today. And there would've been a bunch of branches in the middle where the lifeforms went extinct.

Like this illustration:

http://www.veritas-ucsb.org//library/or ... /FIGE.html

But, what we see from the evidence of the Cambrian Explosion are independent trees arising simulatenously.


http://www.veritas-ucsb.org//library/or ... /FIGK.html

So, there is a conflict between what Common Descent would predict and what we see in the evidence in the fossil record.

[Goat]

What happened is that the percentage of life that had 'hard' parts that could fossilize increased
drastically. We have fossils from before the Cambrian explosion, but because of the fact that life did not have hard body parts, it was a lot rarer for it to fossilize.

Interesting, and common, theory, but I find it unsupportable.

For instance, we find jellyfish fossils in the Cambrian layer.

Yes. we do. However, we do not find as many soft bodied animals as we do the hard pieces. I didn't say they were unknown. I said it was rarer
for the fossils to be found. Rarer doesn't mean unknown. If you find this
'unsupportable', can you explain why?

One item that probably helped fuel the 'explosian' was the cambrian was the timeframe when the iron in the oceans had finanlly been oxydized out, and that allowed for a higher percentage of oxygen in the water. This in turn fueled the ability of mulitcelluar organisms to grow bigger. That is
the 'fuel' for the change in environment that allowed larger life to evolve.

As for the 'common decent', you are mistaken. For one thing, common desent starts off with a single celled animal from before the timeframe when 'kingdoms' differentiated. That was well over a billion years before the Cambian explosian. The evidence for that is at the DNA/celluar level, not the fossil level.

"These jellyfish are not just large for the Cambrian, but are the largest jellyfish in the entire fossil record. What is also of interest is that they were among the largest two types of predators in the Cambrian."

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/1786505.stm

So, obviously a lack of hard parts doesn't prevent it from being fossilized.

As for common decent, what is your understanding of the evidence for common decent, and how do you relate it to the cambrian explosion? How
do you think they relate? The evidence for the cambrian explosion and the evidence for common descent are two different things. I want to understand how you are associating them, and what your understanding of both those peices of the puzzle are before responding.

As I understand Common Descent, it basically predicts a tree of life. It started as a single branch at the bottom (the first cell) and then bifurcates up as new species evolve. The end result would be a single tree with a bunch of branches on it. The top branches would be the extant lifeforms today. And there would've been a bunch of branches in the middle where the lifeforms went extinct.

Like this illustration:

http://www.veritas-ucsb.org//library/or ... /FIGE.html

But, what we see from the evidence of the Cambrian Explosion are independent trees arising simulatenously.


http://www.veritas-ucsb.org//library/or ... /FIGK.html

So, there is a conflict between what Common Descent would predict and what we see in the evidence in the fossil record.

[otseng]

Hey, I asked you first

Only Wyvern has proposed anything so far. So, we can discuss that.

Here's a possible explanation though mind you nowhere near enough is known about the period to come to any definite resolution on the matter. The cambrian explosion happened between two extinction events. The first was happened in the vendian period just prior to the cambrian. Granted there is debate whether an actual extinction event occurred during the vendian, however if you accept this as happening it makes perfect sense that there would be an explosion of new organisms to fill the various niches left open from the previous extinction event.
Just as the KT event killed off the dinosaurs and allowed mammals to take over all the niches that suddenly were opened up, again this happened over millions of years but even so it is considered a period of relatively rapid speciation.

What evidence are there of the extinction events?
What caused them?
What niches were there prior to the Cambrian? There is little fossil evidence of much life existing prior to the Cambrian.
Why would the pre-Cambrian extinction cause a sudden rise in complex organisms?
How can new phyla get introduced in such a short period of time during the Cambrian? (<50 million years)
Why did not other extinction events cause a similar rise in the introduction of new phyla?

[Goat]

Hey, I asked you first

Only Wyvern has proposed anything so far. So, we can discuss that.

Here's a possible explanation though mind you nowhere near enough is known about the period to come to any definite resolution on the matter. The cambrian explosion happened between two extinction events. The first was happened in the vendian period just prior to the cambrian. Granted there is debate whether an actual extinction event occurred during the vendian, however if you accept this as happening it makes perfect sense that there would be an explosion of new organisms to fill the various niches left open from the previous extinction event.
Just as the KT event killed off the dinosaurs and allowed mammals to take over all the niches that suddenly were opened up, again this happened over millions of years but even so it is considered a period of relatively rapid speciation.

What evidence are there of the extinction events?
What caused them?
What niches were there prior to the Cambrian? There is little fossil evidence of much life existing prior to the Cambrian.
Why would the pre-Cambrian extinction cause a sudden rise in complex organisms?
How can new phyla get introduced in such a short period of time during the Cambrian? (<50 million years)
Why did not other extinction events cause a similar rise in the introduction of new phyla?

Different extinction events have different causes. Some extinction events were triggered by astroid strikes. The one at the cambrian boundery appears because of the increase of oxygen in the oceans, which many species could not tolerate. This was when the iron finally got totally oxidized out of the water. Prior to the cambrian,the iron in the water prevented free oxygen from being in the water (it would rust out).