Page 487 - Atlas of Creation Volume 3

Harun Yahya

Cambrian explosion at the beginning of the 20th century. In the year
1909, the paleontologist Charles D.
Walcott began investigations

in the Canadian Rocky
Mountains. In the area of
the Burgess Pass, he dis- Marella:
covered very well-pre- An arthropod
capable of
served strata of shale
both walking
rock. He quickly and swimming
realized that the

Charles D. Walcott Burgess Shale
contained
Xystridura:
many fossils be-
This species of
longing to the Cambrian trilobite pos-
period. For the next four years, Walcott sessed complex
eyes consisting
carefully collected between 60,000 and 80,000 fossils from of many lenses.

the shale and made a note of the most subtle differences
he discovered among them.
The most amazing thing about the Burgess Shale fos-

sils was that they contained the remains of creatures be-
longing to all the phyla alive today. (A phylum is the
largest taxonomic category used to classify creatures in
the animal kingdom. Animals are divided into more than
50 phyla, and each phylum has its own body design.

Among the best known phyla are the Chordata including
the vertebrates, the Arthropoda containing all insects, and
Mollusca containing all soft-bodied invertebrates with

shells.)
Walcott was very
surprised to see what
phyla these fossils be-
longed to. No signifi-

cant life had been
discovered in much Pikaia:
older strata; but the The oldest
known Chordata
layer he discovered con- fossil
tained creatures belong-
ing to nearly all known
phyla, and fossils of hith-
erto unknown phyla as The fact that all living phyla existed dur-
ing the Cambrian period demolishes the
well. This showed that all
basis of the Darwinist family tree.
the bodily characteristics in
the animal kingdom came

about at the same time, in the same geological period.
This dealt a fatal blow to Darwin's theory. He had pro-
posed that creatures had developed slowly and gradually,
like the twigs of a tree. According to Darwin's speculations,
at first there must have been one single phylum in the world,

Adnan Oktar 485