Page 33 - Atlas of Creation Volume 1

Harun Yahya

The Cambrian Period (543-490 million years ago)

This period is the geological age in which all the basic living groups (or phyla) still alive today, and

even more that subsequently became extinct, appeared suddenly. (Phylum is the largest category after
kingdom in the classification of living things. Phyla are determined on the basis of the numbers and
variety of living things' organs and tissues, their bodily symmetry and internal organization. The

number of today's phyla has been determined as 35, but around 50 existed during the Cambrian Period.)
The emergence of species was so sudden and so wide-ranging that scientists gave it the name of the
"Cambrian Explosion." The evolutionist paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould has described this
phenomenon as "the most remarkable and puzzling event in the history of life", while the evolutionist
zoologist Thomas S. Ray writes that the origin of multi-cellular life is an event of comparable significance

to the origin of life itself.

A drawing of the creatures from the Cambrian Period.

When one considers information about the Cambrian explosion as provided by the science of
paleontology, it clearly confirms God's creation and refutes the theory of evolution. The Precambrian age
before the Cambrian was populated mainly by single-celled organisms, with just a few multi-celled life

forms with few specific characteristics and lacking such complex structures as eyes and feet. Therefore,
no evidence supports the imaginary evolutionary transition to Cambrian life forms, and not a single
fossil that can be claimed to represent their supposed forerunner. In this barren environment, inhabited

by single-celled organisms, an astonishing variety of life with exceedingly complex features suddenly
came into being. Through this explosion, moreover, there emerged life forms separated from one another
by very distinct structural characteristics. Fossils reveal very profound gaps in terms of both relatedness
and complexity among organisms living in the Precambrian and those in the Cambrian. So striking are

Adnan Oktar 31