Page 28 - The Cambrian Evidence that Darwin Failed to Comprehend

The Cambrian Evidence That Darwin Failed to Comprehend

However, Darwin was also aware that no such intermediate-
form fossils had yet been found—and admitted that this fact was a
major dilemma that threatened his theory. That is why, in the chap-
ter titled “Difficulties on Theory,” he wrote:
Why, if species have descended from other species by insensibly fine
gradations, do we not everywhere see innumerable transitional
forms? Why is not all nature in confusion, instead of the species being,
as we see them, well defined? . . . But, as by this theory innumerable
transitional forms must have existed, why do we not find them em-
bedded in countless numbers in the crust of the earth? . . . Why then
is not every geological formation and every stratum full of such inter-
mediate links? Geology assuredly does not reveal any such finely
graduated organic chain; and this perhaps, is the most obvious and
gravest objection which can be urged against my theory. 3
According to Darwin, species, differentiating themselves by
way of minuscule changes, must first have formed families, then or-
ders, then classes and finally phyla—the largest division in the liv-
ing world that separates living things in terms of their basic anatom-
ical structures.
Yet the fossil findings were incompatible with Darwin’s the-
ory!
Cambrian fossils discovered in Wales dealt a severe blow to the
classification with which Darwin set out his theory. The Cambrian
Period (from 542 to 488 million years ago), the oldest in the history
of multi-cellular organisms, represented the sudden emergence of a
great many phyla and classes of animals, all in their fully formed
states, in an environment where only single-celled organisms had
existed before. To put it another way, biology operated in the exact
opposite manner of what Darwin predicted: Phyla emerged along
with individual species, not afterward.

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