Return to David's theory of evolution PART 2 (Cambrian) (Evolution)

by dhw, Thursday, June 09, 2022, 08:30 (680 days ago) @ David Turell

Ediacaran-Cambrian transition: 410,000 years

dhw: Thank you for this. I don’t understand the figures given by the other researchers, which appear to allow for variations amounting to millions of years. In any case, the various new life forms did not occur all at once at the beginning of the Cambrian, which itself lasted for 13-25 million years (Wikipedia).

You have ignored this.

DAVID: This is very specific new research looking at the specific time interval between the layers.

Shouldn’t we wait and see if these new figures are universally accepted? In any case, you have not answered the point that all the new species did not suddenly appear after 410,000 years!

DAVID: In the Grand Canyon, the layer junctions are narrower than my finger width.

I’m in no position to discuss the implications of this. But I doubt if every palaeontologist agrees that the Grand Canyon provides definitive proof that your God designed new species without any precursors.

dhw: I told you it was written in 2019, and the arguments are not “old news”. Your new news is that one team reckons the boundary between Ediacaran and Cambrian was only 410,000 years. That alters nothing except the time available for all the transitions, and for all we know, that will also be “old news” in 2023.

DAVID: What new news in 2023??? If the interval is this short now and peer reviewed and accepted as valid, it is valid reaseach. The interval will not grow bigger again!!

Who has accepted it as valid? I thought this theory was hot off the press. Do you really believe that all research into the subject is now over? In any case, this one discovery does not invalidate any of the points made in the articles I posted.

dhw: Some relevant quotes:

QUOTES: "It is also important to realize that many of the Cambrian organisms, although likely near the base of major branches of the tree of life, did not possess all of the defining characteristics of modern animal body plans. These defining characteristics appeared progressively over a much longer period of time."

DAVID: Not valid as to layer separation in time.

Sorry, but how does that come to mean that all the defining characteristics of modern animals suddenly appeared fully developed 410,000 years after the Ediacaran period?

"Some of the new fossil discoveries, in fact, appear to be more primitive precursors of the later Cambrian body plans."

(dhw: This ties in with the remarkable discovery you alerted us to under “neuropeptides”)

DAVID: True, but within the same Cambrian period.

The Cambrian period apparently lasted for about 20 million years, but the remarkable discovery was of precursors to the brain and nervous system long before the Cambrian.

"The sudden change of the Cambrian Era was, in relative terms, not too sudden for the process of evolution. The changes during the Cambrian Era did not occur over decades, centuries, or even thousands of years; they occurred over millions of years—plenty of time for evolutionary change."

DAVID: This is off the point of the true gap measurement in the new discovery paper.

I thought the gap referred to the transition between Ediacaran and Cambrian. Are the researchers disputing that the changes occurred over millions of years?

dhw: (A hugely important observation, especially if you bear in mind Mirouze’s point that “TEs are likely major drivers of rapid evolution – changes measured in terms of generations rather than millennia.” Add to this Shapiro’s theory that intelligent cells (not random mutations) produce the innovations that lead to speciation, and there is indeed “plenty of time for evolutionary change”. Which of these arguments have been invalidated by the up-to-date estimate of 410,000 years?)

DAVID: You are straw clutching. Shapiro's theory is fine with this.

Why is it straw clutching to point out that changes take place through generations rather than through the passing of time, and why do you regard the theory of cellular intelligence as straw clutching – especially if we propose that your God may have designed it?