Precambrian environment (Introduction)

by dhw, Friday, May 24, 2013, 12:52 (4203 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: This Chinese site has wonderful soft tissue fossils preserved. This refutes the argument that the Cambrian Explosion is due to a lack of precursor fossils. The jump to the Cambrian phyla is a true jump.-https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maotianshan_Shales-Once again, thank you for keeping us up to date with the science world. Two passages leapt out at me:-"About one in eight animals are problematic forms of uncertain affinity, some of which may have been evolutionary experiments that survived for only a brief period as benthic environments rapidly changed in the Cambrian."-It seems to me that this is a massive pointer to "the intelligent cell" experimenting (as opposed to a god dabbling, or a load of random mutations). Changing environments trigger experiments, some of which succeed, while others fail. Hence survival or extinction.-"The enigmatic Yunnanozoon lividum is considered to be the earliest hemichordate, possessing many of the characteristic chordate features and providing an anatomical link between invertebrates and chordates. Haikouella lanceolata is described to be the earliest craniate-like chordate. This fish-like animal has many similarities to Y. lividum, but also differs in several aspects: it has a discernible heart, dorsal and ventral aorta, gill filaments, and a notochord (neural chord)."-As sets of cells experiment within living organisms, other organisms may take up whatever is successful and develop it for themselves. We humans do this all the time, but maybe the same processes apply throughout Nature, as individual intelligences come up with new ideas. How they first came into being we don't know, but isn't this a convincing explanation of how evolution itself actually works? No random mutations, no missing fossils, shared ideas, cooperation, convergence, individual experiments and innovations leading to speciation...all derived from the mechanisms within "the intelligent cell".