Vast new Cambrian explosion (Introduction)
by David Turell 
, Thursday, February 13, 2014, 15:19 (3936 days ago)
A large group of new fossils with soft organs parts at a layer about 100,000 years earlier than the Burgess shale, 24 miles away in canada:-http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/mother-lode-of-fossils-discovered-in-canada/-"About half of the 55 species discovered at Marble Canyon so far are also found at the original Burgess Shale site, the researchers report. Some of the original site's rare species are more abundant in the canyon, such as the polychaete worm Burgessochaeta. But "sessile" species are scarce or missing. These creatures, such as sponges and brachiopods, spend their lives attached to the rocks or the seafloor. "Some species at Marble Canyon are also found in China's Chengjiang fossil beds, which are 10 million years older than the Burgess Shale. Until now, researchers thought these Cambrian animals went extinct by the time the Burgess Shale formed. Their discovery in Canada means that many Cambrian life forms were more widespread and longer-lived than previously thought, the researchers said. [Image Gallery: Fantastic Fossils]"
Vast new Cambrian explosion: new fossil
by David Turell , Saturday, March 28, 2015, 15:03 (3528 days ago) @ David Turell
A large group of new fossils with soft organs parts at a layer about 100,000 years earlier than the Burgess shale, 24 miles away in canada: > > http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/mother-lode-of-fossils-discovered-in-canada/&... > "About half of the 55 species discovered at Marble Canyon so far are also found at the original Burgess Shale site, the researchers report. > "Some species at Marble Canyon are also found in China's Chengjiang fossil beds, which are 10 million years older than the Burgess Shale. -Marble Canyon complex arthropod, very specialized:-http://www.livescience.com/50285-new-cambrian-predator-yawunik-kootenayi.html?cmpid=559197-"A newly discovered Cambrian predator with a wicked set of arms under its four-eyed face reveals that early arthropods were experimentalists when it came to using their limbs.-"The marine creature, now called Yawunik kootenayi, lived 508 million years ago during the Cambrian Period, when the major animal groups and complex ecosystems first appeared in the fossil record. Its fossils are about the size and shape of an empanada (6 inches, or 15 centimeters, long).-"It is the first new species reported from a stunning fossil find in Marble Canyon in British Columbia's Kootenay National Park. The Marble Canyon fossil beds, located in 2012, rival the iconic Burgess Shale for their diversity of soft-bodied fossils and exquisite preservation, scientists said."
Vast new Cambrian explosion: new China deposit
by David Turell , Saturday, March 23, 2019, 13:39 (2072 days ago) @ David Turell
An enormous trove of well-preserved new forms found:
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2019/mar/21/mindblowing-haul-of-fossils-over-500m-y...
"A “mindblowing” haul of fossils that captures the riot of evolution that kickstarted the diversity of life on Earth more than half a billion years ago has been discovered by researchers in China.
"Paleontologists found thousands of fossils in rocks on the bank of the Danshui river in Hubei province in southern China, where primitive forms of jellyfish, sponges, algae, anemones, worms and arthropods with thin whip-like feelers were entombed in an ancient underwater mudslide.
"The creatures are so well preserved in the fossils that the soft tissues of their bodies, including the muscles, guts, eyes, gills, mouths and other openings are all still visible. The 4,351 separate fossils excavated so far represent 101 species, 53 of them new.
"The fossilised organisms date back to 518m years ago when life on Earth experienced a massive burst in diversity known as the Cambrian explosion. The event, at the dawn of animal life, marked the arrival of all manner of unusual creatures. Many went extinct as evolutionary dead-ends, but others went on to form the first sturdy branches of the tree of life.
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Scientists still debate what prompted the Cambrian explosion. One idea is that life stumbled upon the genetic tools to build animal bodies, but the onset of predation, which triggered an evolutionary arms race, shifts in tectonic plates, and a surge of nutrients into the oceans, may also have played a part.
"Until now, the most impressive fossils from the Cambrian explosion were those found in the Burgess Shale, a 508m-year-old rock formation in Canada, and in the 518m-year-old Chengjiang formation in China. The new fossils, found near the junction of the Danshui and Qingjiang rivers in Hubei province in China, provide a snapshot of a radically different ecosystem of organisms that lived around the same time.
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"Martin Smith, a paleontologist at Durham University who was not involved in the work, said the new site was remarkable for capturing a profoundly important time in evolutionary history in such incredible detail. “Its preservational quality is mindblowing,” he said. “If you sent a time traveller back to the Cambrian period armed with a camera and an x-ray machine, the images they’d come back with would be nothing compared to these fossils, which preserve detail finer than a human hair.
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“'These fossils help us to piece together the steps that evolution took as animals evolved from whatever squishy blob represents their common ancestor to the rich diversity of lineages alive today,” he added. “Because some of the preserved organisms are much simpler than their living relatives, they help us to tease apart how complex organs such as brains could be assembled through blind evolutionary processes.'”
Comment: Note my bold, which shows a blind non-scientific faith in chance. These are complex organisms with organ systems, and there are no precursors. Darwin's fears are fully met: the gap grows larger, not smaller.