Page 29 - The Cambrian Evidence that Darwin Failed to Comprehend

HARUN YAHYA

No doubt, this was a matter of concern for any evolutionist!
Darwin himself was well aware of the results already emerging from
the fossil discoveries of his own day, and he described this as one of
the gravest difficulties that could threaten his theory:
Consequently, if my theory be true, it is indisputable that before the
lowest Silurian* [Cambrian] stratum was deposited, long periods
elapsed, as long as, or probably far longer than, the whole interval
from the Silurian age to the present day; and that during these vast,
yet quite unknown, periods of time, the world swarmed with living
creatures. To the question why we do not find records of these vast
primordial periods, I can give no satisfactory answer. 4

When Darwin learned that some of the most fundamental
classes of the animal world appeared suddenly in the oldest known
rock strata, he described this as a “serious” problem, and said, “The
case at present must remain inexplicable, and may be truly urged as
a valid argument against the views here entertained.” 5
However, in Darwin’s view, this problem was only an ostensi-
ble one, because he believed that the difficulty would be resolved in
the future. For that reason, he claimed as a sort of alibi that, the his-
tory of the Earth was not preserved well in the fossil record.
According to Darwin, complex organic entities had indeed ap-
peared long before the formation of Cambrian strata, and their fos-
sil remains must have been left behind somewhere in the oldest—
and so far, unknown—sedimentary rocks laid down in the history of
the Earth. He assumed that pre-Cambrian fossil beds had been al-
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tered due to heat and pressure—much as sedimentary limestone is
transformed into metamorphic marble—for which reason all traces
of fossils in those rocks might well have been eradicated.
He therefore maintained that all the major animal groups had

*In Darwin’s day, the Silurian strata were thought to include what we today refer to as the
Cambrian.

Adnan Oktar

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