KnightWhoSaysNi

Fuz Rana, an old earth creationist of Reasons to Believe, said on their radio show that the Cambrian explosion discredits evolution because all major animal phyla appear in the fossil record within a narrow window of geologic time, being 2-3 million years. He mentioned his source being Chinese paleontological literature.

I was immediately skeptical of this. First, I strongly doubt that absolute dating techniques can measure that accurately. Wasn't the margin for error for the various radiometric techniques used for the Paleozoic in the order of ± tens of millions of years? And I heard somewhere that the Cambrian "explosion" was something that happened over 60 million years.

Can anyone confirm this? Thanks.

[ April 27, 2002: Message edited by: Nightshade ]</p>

tgamble

1) The cambrian is a lot longer than 2-3 million years.

2) Not all animal phyla (and what about plants?!) appear in the Cambrian. Some come before, some after.

I'm sure patrick will show up soon. There are other threads on the cambrian if you want to search for them.

Valentine Pontifex

The Cambrian is a lot longer than 2-3 million years; however the Cambrian explosion is not. The event that bears that name is 5 million years at the most with that 2-3 million years being a common estimate. You are quite correct in saying that all the phyla don't start in it though.

Oolon Colluphid

There's plenty of Precambrian fossils. Just do a google search for 'Ediacaran' and 'fossils' or 'fauna'.

Oolon

Gar

I'm not entirely sure on this, but if I'm right their argument is rather uninformed. The evolution of simple organisms happens much faster than that of more complex organisms since simple organisms reproduce faster. Can anyone verify this?