Fossil Friday:  An Extinct Animal Body Plan from the Cambrian Explosion

Burgess Shale, Cambrian Explosion, Cambroernida, Charles Walcott, Chengjiang biota, convergence, Deuterostomia, Early Cambrian, echinoderms, Eldonia ludwigi, Evolution, gobbledygook, hemichordates, Herpetogaster, Herpetogaster collinsi, Late Devonian, Michael Denton, paleontology, Paleozoic, Protostomia, Rotadiscus grandis
One of the strongest arguments in favor of Darwinian evolution gets more and more dismantled, which totally vindicates the critique by Michael Denton. Source
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Fossil Friday: Chitinozoa — Enigmatic Microfossils from the Paleozoic Era

animal phyla, asexual reproduction, Cambrian Explosion, chitin, Chitinozoa, cocoon, Early Cambrian, egg cases, Evolution, Fossil Friday (series), fossil record, Gotland, great Ordovician biodiversification event, marine ecosystems, microfossils, paleontology, planktonic organisms, protists, SEM image, Silurian Period, single-celled organisms, sudden appearance, Sweden, testate amoebae, transitional fossils
We may now add the mysterious Chitinozoa to this ever-growing list of products of the burst of biological creativity in the Early Cambrian. Source
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No. 3 Story of 2023: Textbook Wisdom on Origin of Multicellular Life Turns Out to Be Wrong

animal body plans, Avalon explosion, Cambrian Explosion, Cambrian News, Christian Bjerrum, consensus, Darwin's Doubt, Ediacaran biota, Ediacaran organisms, Evolution, Fossil Friday, fossil record, Ken Towe, oxygen, paleontology, Precambrian, Smithsonian Institution, Stephen Meyer
Incidentally, a few days ago I received a message from my paleobiologist colleague Dr. Ken Towe, a retired senior scientist at the Smithsonian Institution. Source
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Fossil Friday: Cambrian Bryozoa Come and Go

bilaterians, body plans, Bryozoa, Cambrian animals, Cambrian Explosion, Carboniferous strata, chordates, Evolution, evolutionary biology, Fossil Friday, fossil record, great Ordovician biodiversification event, green algae, inkblots, invertebrates, lophophore, Lower Cambrian, Lower Ordovician, metazoans, microCT, Middle Pennsylvanian, molecular clock studies, moss animals, Nevada, Ohio, paleontology, phosphatic fossils, Pywackia baileyi, South China, tentacles
This is a field that often has more in common with the interpretation of inkblots in Rorschach tests than with hard science. Source
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Plant Evolution: All Gaps and Miracles

abominable mystery, algae, angiosperms, bryophytes, Cambrian Explosion, Charlie Brown, clubmosses, conifers, cycads, Darwinian gradualism, embryophyte, Evolution, ferns, flowering plants, ginkgoes, gymnosperms, hornworts, James Clark, Life Sciences, liverworts, lycophytes, miracles, morphospace, mosses, Nature Plants, neofunctionalization, Philip C. J. Donoghue, pine tree, plants, punctuated equilibria, Sandy Hetherington, The Conversation, trilobites, University of Bristol, vascular plants
A major study looks for evolution, but finds huge disparities, stasis, gaps, periodic explosions, and miracles of emergence held together with imagination. Source
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FAQ: The Cambrian Explosion Is Real, and It Is a Problem for Evolution

biology, Cambrian Explosion, Cambrian News, Critical Transitions in Nature and Society, Darwin's Doubt, Ediacaran fauna, Evolution, Evolution News, FAQ, fossil record, genetic information, Graham Budd, Intelligent Design, Jerry Coyne, Martin Scheffer, Nick Matzke, oxygen, paleobiology, paleontology, Precambrian, Professor Dave, scientific literature, Sören Jensen, Stephen Meyer
An email correspondent who is friendly to intelligent design (ID) recently wrote us asking how to respond to common objections to ID arguments about the Cambrian explosion. Source
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Fossil Friday: The Explosive Origin of Complex Eyes in Trilobites

arthropods, begging the question, Cambrian Explosion, common ancestry, Darwinists, Evolution, evolutionary biology, falsification, Fossil Friday, fossil record, holochroal eyes, immunization, just-so stories, materialists, Molière, opium, paleontology, phylogeny, pseudoscience, schizochroal eyes, Stephen Meyer, trilobites
The theory has been made immune to empirical falsification because it is simply assumed to be true by default as the only viable option for materialists. Source
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Fossil Friday: The Abrupt Origin of Butterflies

abrupt appearance, animal phyla, butterflies, caddisfly, Cambrian Explosion, Darwinian theory, Early Cretaceous, Eocene, Evolution, Florissant, Fossil Friday, fossil record, Hesperiidae, Intelligent Design, Lepidoptera, macrolepidopterans, Mesozoic, moth, Nymphalidae, paleontology, Papillionidae, Pieridae, Prodryas persephone, Tertiary Butterfly Explosion
This phenomenon could rightfully be called a Tertiary Butterfly Explosion analogous to the Cambrian Explosion of animal phyla. Source
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