Page 147 - The Cambrian Evidence that Darwin Failed to Comprehend

HARUN YAHYA

of a large number of lenses. 106 Rather resembling a honeycomb, these
lenses are just about as clear as a dragonfly’s. More interesting is the
fact that they were fused together at the front of the animal. 107
Trilobites’ eyes had another arthropod trait: their compound
structure. These eyes contained numerous sub-units, each of which
was a lens. Just like those in a fly’s compound eyes, each hexagonal
unit served as an independent lens. Each one perceived a different
image, which image was then combined into a whole. The only dif-
ference between a fly’s and a trilobite’s compound eyes is that the
trilobite’s was made up of calcite, a mineral. 108
A trilobite eye is a miraculous construction of small, slender
prisms. Each wide, hemispherical eye may have hundreds or even
thousands of lenses, each of which perceived an image from a differ-
ent direction. Some faced straight forwards, others to the side, and
some even faced backward. Each lens focused on an area deter-
mined for it. The trilobite was thus able to perceive danger ap-
proaching from any direction, and also possessed a great advantage
when hunting.
The average trilobite lens was long and thin, a few tens of thou-
sandths of a millimeter across and hexagonal in shape. With their
special geometry, the hexagons exhibited a perfect structure on the
eye’s sloping convex surface. In order for that curve to be estab-
lished and for a little space to be made around it, a few rare lenses
had other shapes, and there were also variations in their arrange-
ments. 109 It has been realized that the trilobite’s eye worked in the
same way as those of present-day arthropods.
Since every lens “saw” a particular pre-selected field, the trilo-
bite perceived the world as a mosaic of small images. The shape of
any object before it must have varied slightly from lens to lens, with
a different image produced by each one. The resolution of the ima-
ges perceived also depended on the number of these lenses. More

Adnan Oktar

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