More on the fossil record fossil recording to Darwinists dismay.

Fossil Friday: Is Triassic Angiosperm-Like Pollen a Solution to Darwin’s Abominable Mystery? 

Günter Bechly 

In a series of articles (Bechly 2021b, 2021c, 2021d, 2021e, 2022a) and podcasts (Bechly 2021a) I have thoroughly discussed Darwin’s abominable mystery of the abrupt appearance of flowering plants in the Early Cretaceous. I also showed that all alleged pre-Cretaceous fossils of flowering plants have been refuted by experts (Sokoloff et al. 2019, Bateman 2020) as misidentified gymnosperms.

However, there is one remaining issue to address, which is palynology, the science of fossil pollen. Despite their tiny size, plant pollen are extremely durable and well-represented as microfossils throughout the Phanerozoic fossil record, even in sediments that otherwise lack any discernible fossils. Some scientists have described fossil pollen from the Triassic period (252-201 million years ago), which have unique angiosperm characteristics such as a single furrow (monosulcate) and a reticulate-columellar sculpture (Pocock & Vasanthy 1988, Cornet 1989b, Zavada 1990, Doyle & Hotton 1991, Hochuli & Feist-Burkhardt 2004, 2013). This Fossil Friday features microphotographs of angiosperm-like pollen of type 1 from the Middle Triassic of Switzerland (Hochuli & Feist-Burkhardt 2013). These angiosperm-like pollen have been interpreted by some as evidence for a much earlier origin of flowering plants, and you can also find this claim in media reports (Palmer 1994, Anderson 2013, University of Zurich 2013). Even some creationists have uncritically embraced these claims (Thomas & Clarey 2013), because they erroneously believed that it supports their young earth scenario. However, do these claims really hold water at all? 

Flies in the Ointment 

The first fly in the ointment was early considerations that monosulcate pollen from the Triassic of North America may have independently acquired angiosperm-like characteristics (Zavada 1990). The same holds for the angiosperm-like wind dispersal mechanism in a Triassic plant seed, which is “probably representing a case of convergent evolution of a similar structure in a gymnosperm” (Axsmith et al. 2013).

Doyle (2005) mentioned that the angiosperm-like Triassic Crinopolles grains possess a gymnosperm-like thick endexine layer, which is unexpected under common schemes of angiosperm evolution. However, he proposed a new scheme (Doyle 2001), which could make this feature equally likely to be a retained primitive character that was later reduced in angiosperm evolution. He concluded that “more evidence on the plants that produced Crinopolles pollen is needed to determine whether they were angiosperm relatives or an extinct convergent line.” 

Herendeen et al. (2017) reviewed molecular and paleontological evidence for the age of angiosperms and remarked that “angiosperm-like pollen grains with reticulate pollen walls [were] recorded from the Middle and Late Triassic, but so far their botanical affinity remains uncertain.” They concluded that a “critical assessment of these reports shows that, so far, none provide unequivocal evidence of pre-Cretaceous angiosperms.” They cautioned that “it may also be significant that similar reticulate angiosperm­-like grains have not been reported from the Jurassic.” They also cautioned that tricolpate pollen (Eucommiidites) from the Triassic and Jurassic was previously misidentified as angiosperm pollen resembling the extant genus Eucommia, but later was shown “to have been produced by an extinct group of non­-angiosperm seed plants, Erdtmanithecales,” likely related to living gnetophytes (Friis & Pedersen 1996). This is especially relevant, because according to the authors, the Crinopolles not only share with Eucommiidites grains the non-angiosperm-like thick endexine but also a similar unusual distribution of apertures. 

A Disturbing Discrepancy 

Coiro et al. (2019), co-authored by the very James Doyle mentioned before, studied the disturbing discrepancy between molecular clock datings and the fossil record of angiosperms. They found that the sequence of pollen types in the Lower Cretaceous strongly conflicts with any earlier datings for the origin of angiosperms. It would simply make no sense that features which clearly appear in a sequence in the Cretaceous were already present all along in the Triassic, but absent throughout the Jurassic period, and then miraculously reappear in a particular order that suggests a Cretaceous sequential origin. The authors furthermore concluded that “critical scrutiny shows that supposed pre-Cretaceous angiosperms either represent other plant groups or lack features that might confidently assign them to the angiosperms.”

The most recent study by Zavialova & Tekleva (2021) reviewed all the angiosperm-like pollen from pre-Cretaceous deposits that lack angiosperm macrofossils. They concluded: “The general morphology, sculpture, exine ultrastructure, as well as some available data on associations with macroremains allow us to interpret with sufficient confidence an overwhelming majority of such finds as gymnosperm pollen.” That’s pretty unambiguous and finally buries the whole thing. Concerning the remaining finds they likewise clarified: “The finds of Pre-Cretaceous reticulate pollen seem the most controversial; however, those from the Permian are also known from conifer sporangia, and a gymnosperm variant of the endexine was revealed in one of Triassic reticulates.” 

Thus, the alleged Triassic angiosperm pollen fossils just seem to repeat the same pattern of misidentified gymnosperms as the alleged Jurassic angiosperm plant fossils we have discussed in my previous articles. It looks like the strong desire to find what Darwins’s theory would predict strongly biases the interpretations of some experts. Instead, the consistent failure of all these claims should be considered as conflicting evidence and failed predictions that challenge the theory. With all counterarguments now decisively refuted, Darwin’s abominable mystery remains a sting in the flesh of Darwinists, as part of the general inconvenient pattern of abrupt appearances in the fossil record that suggest intelligent design (Bechly & Meyer 2017, Bechly 2021f).

P.S.: The above mentioned studies (e.g., Crane 1987, Herendeen et al. 2017, Coiro et al. 2019) also rejected Triassic macrofossils of supposed angiosperm origin, i.e., Sanmiguelia (Cornet 1986, 1989a), either as misidentified gymnosperms or at least insufficiently justified. 

References 

Anderson N 2013. Flowering Plants May Have Originated Earlier than Previously Thought. SciNews October 2, 2013. https://www.sci.news/paleontology/science-flowering-plants-01427.html

Axsmith BJ, Fraser NC & Corso T 2013. A Triassic seed with an angiosperm-like wind dispersal mechanism. Palaeontology 56(5), 1173–1177. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/pala.12049

Bateman RM 2020. Hunting the Snark: the flawed search for mythical Jurassic angiosperms. Journal of Experimental Botany 71(1), 22–35. DOI:https://doi.org/10.1093/jxb/erz411

Bechly G 2021a. Botany Journal Revisits Darwin’s “Abominable Mystery”. ID the Future 1420. https://idthefuture.com/1420/

Bechly G 2021b. Darwin’s “Abominable Mystery”: Still Alive and Kicking. Evolution NewsJune 11, 2021. https://evolutionnews.org/2021/06/darwins-abominable-mystery-still-alive-and-kicking/

Bechly G 2021c. Darwin’s “Abominable Mystery” Is Not Alone: Gaps Everywhere! Evolution News June 12, 2021. https://evolutionnews.org/2021/06/darwins-abominable-mystery-is-not-alone-gaps-everywhere/ 

Bechly G 2021d. Darwin’s “Abominable Mystery”: Jurassic Flowering Plants After All? Evolution News June 14, 2021. https://evolutionnews.org/2021/06/darwins-abominable-mystery-jurassic-flowering-plants-after-all/

Bechly G 2021e. Darwin’s “Abominable Mystery”: Mesozoic Cupules Come to the Rescue? Evolution News June 15, 2021. https://evolutionnews.org/2021/06/darwins-abominable-mystery-mesozoic-cupules-come-to-the-rescue/

Bechly G 2021f. Chapter 31: Does the Fossil Record Demonstrate Darwinian Evolution? pp 345–356 in: Dembski WA, Luskin C, Holden JM (eds). The Comprehensive Guide to Science and Faith. Eugene (OR): Harvest House.

Bechly G 2022a. Fossil Friday: Flowering Plants — Darwin’s Abominable Mystery. Evolution News October 21, 2022. https://evolutionnews.org/2022/10/fossil-friday-flowering-plants-darwins-abominable-mystery/

Bechly G 2022b. Fossil Friday: Florigerminis, Another Failed Candidate for a Jurassic Flowering Plant. Evolution News November 18, 2022. https://evolutionnews.org/2022/11/fossil-friday-florigerminis-another-failed-candidate-for-a-jurassic-flowering-plant/

Bechly G 2022b. Fossil Friday: Florigerminis, Another Failed Candidate for a Jurassic Flowering Plant. Evolution News November 18, 2022. https://evolutionnews.org/2022/11/fossil-friday-florigerminis-another-failed-candidate-for-a-jurassic-flowering-plant/

Bechly G, Meyer SC 2017. Chapter 10. The Fossil Record and Universal Common Ancestry. Pp 331–361 in: Moreland JP, Meyer SC, Shaw C, Gauger AK, Grudem W (eds). Theistic Evolution: A Scientific, Philosophical, and Theological Critique. Wheaton (IL): Crossway, 1008 pp.

Coiro M, Doyle JA & Hilton J 2019. How deep is the conflict between molecular and fossil evidence on the age of angiosperms? New Phytologist 223(1), 83–99. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/nph.15708

Cornet B 1986. The leaf venation and reproductive structures of a Late Triassic angiosperm, Sanmiguelia lewisii. Evolutionary Theory 7(5), 231–309.

Cornet 1989a. The reproductive morphology and biology of Sanmiguelia lewisii, and its bearing on angiosperm evolution in the Late Triassic. Evolutionary Trends in Plants 3(1), 25–51. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/284026757

Cornet B 1989b. Late Triassic Angiosperm-Like Pollen from the Richmond Rift Basin of Virginia, U.S.A. Palaeontographica B 213(1–3), 37–87. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/285282538

Crane PR 1987. Review of “The leaf venation and reproductive structures of a Late Triassic angiosperm, Sanmiguelia lewisii” by B. Cornet. Taxon 36(4), 778–779. DOI: https://doi.org/10.2307/1221141

Doyle JA 2001. Significance of molecular phylogenetic analyses for paleobotanical investigations on the origin of angiosperms. The Palaeobotanist 50(1–3), 167–188. DOI: https://doi.org/10.54991/jop 

Doyle JA 2005. Early evolution of angiosperm pollen as inferred from molecular and morphological phylogenetic analyses, Grana 44(4), 227–251, DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/00173130500424557

Doyle JA & Hotton CL 1991. Diversification of early angiosperm pollen in a cladistic context. pp. 169–195 in: Blackmore S & Barnes SH (eds). Pollen and Spores: Patterns of Diversity. Systematics Association Special Volume 44. Clarendon Press, Oxford (UK), 391 pp

Friis EM & Pedersen KR 1996. Eucommiitheca hirsuta, a new pollen organ with Eucommiidites pollen from the Early Cretaceous of Portugal. Grana 35(2), 104–112. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/0017313960942948

Herendeen PS, Friis EM, Pedersen KR & Crane PR 2017. Palaeobotanical redux: revisiting the age of the angiosperms. Nature Plants 3:17015, 1–8. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nplants.2017.1

Hochuli PA & Feist-Burkhardt S 2004. A boreal early cradle of Angiosperms? Angiosperm-like pollen from the Middle Triassic of the Barents Sea (Norway). Journal of Micropalaeontology 23(1), 97–104. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1144/jm.23.2.9

Hochuli PA & Feist-Burkhardt S 2013. Angiosperm-like pollen and Afropollis from the Middle Triassic (Anisian) of the Germanic Basin (Northern Switzerland). Frontiers in Plant Science4:344, 1–14. DOI: https://doi.org/10.3389/fpls.2013.0034

Palmer D 1994. First flowers emerge from Triassic mud. NewScientist January 29, 1994. https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg14119102-600-science-first-flowers-emerge-form-triassic-mud/ 

Pocock SAJ & Vasanthy G 1988. Cornetipollis reticulata, a new pollen with angiospermid features from the Upper Triassic (Carnian) sediments of Arizona (U.S.A.), with notes on Equisetosporites. Review of Palaeobotany and Palynology 55(4), 337–356. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/0034-6667(88)90092-9

Sokoloff DD, Remizowa MV, El ES, Rudall PJ & Bateman RM 2019. Supposed Jurassic angiosperms lack pentamery, an important angiosperm-specific feature. New Phytologist228(2), 420–426. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/nph.15974

Thomas B & Clarey T 2013. Pollen Fossils Warp Evolutionary Time. ICR November 27, 2013. https://www.icr.org/article/7836/

University of Zurich 2013. New fossils push the origin of flowering plants back by 100 million years to the early Triassic. ScienceDaily October 1, 2013. https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/10/131001191811.htm

Zavada MS 1990. The Ultrastructure of Three Monosulcate Pollen Grains from the Triassic Chinle Formation, Western United States. Palynology 14, 41–51.http://www.jstor.org/stable/3687497

Zavialova NE & Tekleva MV 2021. Angiosperm Features in Pre-Cretaceous Pollen. Botanicheskiii Zhurnal 106(7), 627–657. DOI: https://doi.org/10.31857/S0006813621070115 [In Russian with English abstract]. 

 

It's still design all the way down?

 Your Designed Body: “Irreducible Complexity on Steroids”

Evolution News 

On a new episode of ID the Future, Your Designed Body co-author and physician Howard Glicksman talks with host and neurosurgery professor Michael Egnor about Glicksman’s new book, written with systems engineer Steve Laufmann. Glicksman walks through a series of systems in the human body that are each irreducibly complex, and are each part of larger coherent interdependent systems. As Glicksman puts it, the human body is “irreducible complexity on steroids.” How could blind evolutionary processes, such as neo-Darwinism’s joint mechanism of natural selection working on random genetic mutations, build this bio-engineering marvel? Your Designed Body makes the case that it couldn’t. It’s not even close. What is required instead is foresight, planning, and engineering genius  

Download the podcast or listen to it here.

Whither the smartest ape?

 Studying Chimps Is “Politics by Other Means” 

Evolution News 

A review by animal historian Brigid Prial of a recent book in which chimpanzee experts reflect on their work tells us a good deal about the chimpanzee expert world.

The reviewer is also the author of “Primatology Is Politics by Other Means” from which we learn: 

“Adam and Eve, Robinson Crusoe and Man Friday, Tarzan and Jane: these are the figures who tell white western people about the origins and foundations of sociality. The stories make claims about “human” nature, “human” society. Western stories take the high ground from which man — impregnable, potent, and endowed with a keen vision of the whole — can survey the field. The sightings generate the aesthetic-political dialectic of contemplation/exploitation, the distorting mirror twins so deeply embedded in the history of science. 

Wait. Isn’t it a fact that humans do have a keen “vision of the whole” and that chimpanzees do not? And cannot? 

Theorizing and Politicking 

Yes. Humans are concerned with chimpanzee welfare and chimpanzees are not concerned with human welfare. All the theorizing and politicking in the world will not change the difference that the human mind makes.

From the h-net review of Chimpanzee Memoirs: Stories of Studying and Saving Our Closest Living Relatives (2022):

Several chapters, notably by established primatologists Goodall, Richard Wrangham, and Christopher Boesch, discuss aspects of their work that have been viewed as controversial, perceived as challenging orthodoxy, or publicly misconstrued. Boesch describes how his observations of cooperation and teaching behaviors in chimpanzees at Taï Forest in Côte D’Ivoire were dismissed by anthropologists and psychologists who privilege laboratory data and believe in “human superiority” (p. 88). Goodall and Wrangham both noted backlash they had received regarding their findings about aggression and violence in chimpanzees, controversies that are examined extensively by Erika Lorraine Milam in her book Creatures of Cain: The Hunt for Human Nature in Cold War America (2019). Supervisors told Goodall that publishing her claims in the 1970s would lend credence to those who argued that war was an inevitability, while Wrangham received similar resistance to his admittedly provocatively titled book Demonic Males: Apes and the Origins of Human Violence (1997). Many authors also describe frustration with the way their research has become sensationalized or stripped of nuance in the media. Elizabeth Lonsdorf was particularly disappointed to see her work lampooned on a “men’s rights” website. For historians of science, these chapters provide insight into how the science of animal behavior is mined for answers to contentious social questions of gender and violence. 

But haven’t these academics made their own field ridiculous already? If they want to claim that chimpanzees, who lack abstract thinking, can teach us a lot about human beings, who have it, they have just plain set themselves up. 

Read the rest at Mind Matters

It made Darwin doubt; it makes Darwinists defiant II

 “Lying on the Internet”? Debunking Dave Farina on Stephen Meyer 

Günter Bechly 

I have been reviewing and responding to popular YouTuber Dave Farina’s recent video (Farina 2022) attacking Stephen Meyer and Darwin’s Doubt. This is the third post in my series. Find the first two here and here. I have provided timecodes in square brackets throughout for ease of following Professor Dave’s (as he styles himself) assertions. 

[TC 15:43] Mr. Farina claims that Dr. Meyer’s central thesis is that “Animals appear in the Cambrian explosion with no predecessors! Nothing!” Farina calls this “caught lying on the Internet” and says it exposes one of Meyer’s biggest and most persistent lies. This is ludicrous, as Farina himself admits in the same video that Meyer in Darwin’s Doubt explicitly acknowledges the existence of Precambrian animals like sponges, cnidarians, and even a possible bilaterian (Kimberella). Farina then goes into various cases of alleged Ediacaran animals. This is supposed to debunk Meyer, or rather Farina’s straw man of Meyer’s argument.

[TC 16:54] Farina starts with sponges and cites the biomarker study of Gold et al. (2016) as evidence for Precambrian sponges. First, as I’ve already emphasized, Meyer acknowledges the possible presence of sponges in the Ediacaran and as Farina himself recognized before, Meyer clearly refers to the origin of bilaterian animal body plans as the problem of the Cambrian Explosion. Therefore, fossils of putative sponges, ctenophores, and cnidarians from the Ediacaran are totally irrelevant. However, even these claims are highly disputed. I have discussed and debunked all this evidence for Precambrian sponges (Bechly 2020c). And in a comment on Facebook, Joe Botting, one of the world leading experts on fossil sponges, agreed with the all points in this article (apart from the conclusion to ID). 

In the description of his video on YouTube, Farina links to two new papers (Zumberge et al. 2018, Love et al. 2020), by the same team of authors, about steroid biomarker evidence for Cryogenian animals about 650 mya. Nettersheim et al. (2019) challenged the identification of demosponges as likely producers of the Cryogenian biomarkers because they found these putative typical sponge biomarkers to be common among unicellular organisms (Rhizaria) and concluded that “negating these hydrocarbons as sponge biomarkers, our study places the oldest evidence for animals closer to the Cambrian Explosion.” Love et al. (2020) briefly responded and disputed the results of Nettersheim et al. as possible artifacts and again suggested that demosponges are currently the only known biological source for the found sterane biomarkers. But another even more recent study by Maldegem et al. (2021) demonstrated that these particular steranes can form via geological alteration of common algal sterols. Here is what the press release by the Australian National University (2020) said: “Scientists have resolved a longstanding controversy surrounding the origins of complex life on Earth. The studies found molecular fossils extracted from 635-million-year-old rocks aren’t the earliest evidence of animals, but instead common algae.” Thus, the alleged conclusive evidence for Cryogenian animals has evaporated. Farina is either unaware of the more recent research, and thus did not do his homework, or he is misleadingly cherry-picking older studies to support his case. 

In Search of Ediacaran Animals 

[TC 17:41] Are there Ediacaran animals 635-541 mya? Farina claims that it is in this period that we find the first animal body fossils. This is of course possible, even though controversial even among the mainstream experts, but it is irrelevant unless we were to find bilaterian animals and putative ancestors of the Cambrian bilaterian animal phyla. Here is what Telford et al. (2015) concluded: “Even if bilaterians were tiny in the Precambrian, they would be capable of being preserved in the microfossil record, suggesting that their absence is real.” Meyer cites Budd and Jensen (2003) forcefully pointing out the lack of Precambrian bilaterian fossils: 

As Graham Budd and Sören Jensen state, “The known [Precambrian/Cambrian] fossil record has not been misunderstood, and there are no convincing bilaterian candidates known from the fossil record until just before the beginning of the Cambrian (c. 543 Ma), even though there are plentiful sediments older than this that should reveal them.” Thus they conclude, “The expected Darwinian pattern of a deep fossil history of the bilaterians, potentially showing their gradual development, stretching hundreds of millions of years into the Precambrian, has singularly failed to materialize.” 

[TC 17:50] Farina mentions Lantianella as a putative Ediacaran cnidarian, so not a bilaterian animal but a member of one of the animal groups that Meyer acknowledges to occur in the Ediacaran. But the case for Lantianella as a cnidarian is far from conclusive. Actually, the fossils described as Lantianella were originally considered to be problematica, possible animals, or taphonomic variations of macroalgae (Yuan et al. 2011, 2013). Van Iten et al. (2013, 2014) and Wan et al. (2016) suggested that Lantianella might be a cnidarian animal, but this was only based on the superficially conulariid-like habitus with presence of a holdfast and tentacle-like structures. Therefore, even the latter authors admitted that “these animal interpretations are intriguing possibilities, but definitive evidence for an animal affinity is lacking.” Nevertheless, without further study or arguments, most subsequent authors have tentatively accepted or at least considered this possibility (e.g., Bowyer et al. 2017, Cunningham et al. 2017b, Dunn & Liu 2017, Dzik et al. 2017, Wood et al. 2019, Cordani et al. 2020, Zhao et al. 2021). Of course they did. Why should they question such convenient hypotheses? The recently described alleged Ediacaran cnidarian Auroralumina (Dunn et al. 2022) is very similar to Lantianella, which surprisingly is not even mentioned in this publication. Maverick paleontologist Gregory Retallack, who considers most Ediacaran organisms as terrestrial lichens, suggested in a comment on Facebook that Auroralumina is similar to the podetium and soredia of the living lichen Cladonia chlorophaea. I don’t believe this fringe view either, but it shows how much room for very different interpretations these fossils leave. These organisms may have been conulariid-like cnidarians, or not. It is a lot of guesswork based on superficial similarities of relatively poorly preserved fossils without much in the way of diagnostic features. For the time being, I think that Lantianella and Auroralumina would be better considered as related forms of Precambrian problematica or macroalgae, especially since similar uncontroversial macroalgae abound in the Ediacaran localities from China (Wang et al. 2020). Anyway, as I have already said, Meyer did not dispute the existence of Ediacaran cnidarians and their (potential) existence is irrelevant for his case about the Cambrian Explosion of bilaterian animal phyla. 

[TC 17:54] Concerning the phosphatized animal embryos from Doushantuo, Farina had boldly claimed that Meyer lied about them, but now at least acknowledges briefly that they have been the subject of intensive debate. However, he thinks that Megasphaera, Caveasphaera, Helicoforamina, and Spiralicellula are genuine animal embryos rather than algae or protists. This is based on the recent papers by Yin et al. (2019, 2022), but they only talk about holozoan affinity, total-group metazoans, and metazoan-like development. That’s fine (even though likely wrong), but again irrelevant in the absence of a strong case that these putative animal embryos belonged to bilaterian animals rather than stem animals. There is no such case, though, even according to the champions of the embryo-interpretation. There is wide agreement that the Doushantuo fossils are not crown-group animals (e.g., Butterfield 2011, Kaplan 2011, Chen et al. 2014b) and thus not bilaterians (the bilaterian animal nature of Vernanimalcula was thoroughly debunked by Bengtson et al. 2012). Telford et al. (2015) therefore said that none of the Doushantuo fossils “can be confidently assigned to bilaterians.” But are those fossils even animal embryos in the wider sense at all? 

Like numerous previous studies (see Bechly 2020c and 2020d for a brief review and references), a brand-new study by Zhang & Zhang (2022) strongly disagrees and concludes that Megasphera’s developmental “features are inconsistent with the embryogenesis of living animals, and therefore do not support the metazoan-embryo interpretation.” Tang (2015) reviewed the controversy around the interpretation of Megasphera and the other genera and concluded that they are algae rather than animal embryos. Spiralicellula was first suggested as possible metazoan embryo by Xiao et al. (1998). Just two years later the authors themselves admitted that the interpretation is problematic (Xiao & Knoll 2000). Later studies suggested that Spiralicellula and Helicoforaminacould instead be of algal (Zhang & Pratt 2015) or mesomycetozoan-like protist (Huldtgren et al. 2011) origin. Xiao et al. (2014) suggested that all these genera are likely multicellular eukaryotes but could not decide if they are algae or stem-animals. Cunningham et al. (2017a) concluded that “although the Weng’an Biota includes forms that could be animals, none can currently be assigned to this group with confidence.” Ouyang et al. (2019)therefore still classified Megasphera, Helicoforamina, and Spiralicellula as acanthomorph acritarchs. Farina does not care about such scientific “subtleties” and presents these problematic and highly controversial taxa as proven evidence of Ediacaran animals. 

By the way: Just this year, another of the alleged Doushantuo animal embryos, called Tianzhushania, was debunked and identified as an algal cyst (Moczydłowska & Liu 2022), which is the most likely fate for all the others.

At best a few forms like Caveasphaera could be stem-metazoans with animal-like development (Yin et al. 2019), but this is far from established. New York Times science writer and ardent evolutionist Carl Zimmer was not convinced either and quoted numerous eminent scientists who strongly dispute such an animal affinity (Zimmer 2019). Another scientific study from the same year accordingly classified Caveasphera among acanthomorph acritarchs like the other genera mentioned above (Ouyang et al. 2019). 

Wondering about Acritarchs 

[TC 18:26] Farina mentions a diversification of acritarchs as possible indirect evidence based on co-evolution with eumetazoans. This seems dubious, because we have no clue what acritarchs even are, and which ecological role if any they might have played for early metazoans. Acritarchs are problematic microfossils that could represent an artificial assemblage of algal cysts, moss pollen, and planktonic protists. Farina’s statement is likely based on the study by Peterson & Butterfield (2005), which found no evidence at all for acritarchs as metazoans or for any metazoans. Instead, they simply correlated molecular clock dates for the origin of metazoans, which we know are highly unreliable and disputed, with detected regime changes in the Proterozoic acritarch record, and boldly concluded in favor of co-evolution. That’s hardly science but more like reading tea leaves. Yet even if true, these early metazoans would most likely have been stem metazoans or non-bilaterian metazoans and thus would be totally irrelevant to the Cambrian Explosion. Nothing in this argument explains the abrupt appearance of the bilaterian animal phyla and body plans in the Early Cambrian.

[TC 18:59] Farina also mentions the low-oxygen requirements of sponges and ctenophores (Mills et al. 2018) as relating to the fact that only the ocean surface was oxygenated until the middle Ediacaran. So what? Unlike me, Meyer did not even dispute the existence of Ediacaran sponges and coelenterates like ctenophores and cnidarians. So this is yet another red herring from Farina that has nothing to do with the real problem of the Cambrian Explosion. 

[TC 19:20] Farina refers to the three assemblages of the typical Ediacaran biota that exhibit increasing ecological complexity (Eden et al. 2022): 

Avalon Assemblage 771-555 mya

White Sea Assemblage 560-551 mya

Nama Assemblage 555-541 mya

Apparently, he wants to give the impression that Ediacaran biota progress towards the Cambrian animal phyla. However, this is false. No phylogenetic link has been established between the organisms of these Ediacaran biota and the Cambrian animal phyla, and the very existence of any Ediacaran animals is highly controversial among experts to say the least (see further). 

[TC 19:58] Farina misleads his viewers by claiming that the interpretation of the Ediacaran biota as enigmatic problematics, multicellular protists, fungi, and lichens, was just due to an early lack of knowledge, from the time of their discovery in the 1940s to Stephen Jay Gould’s time in the 1980s. Farina maintains that modern research has changed this picture in favor of an animal interpretation, which he seems to base on Liu et al. (2015).

[TC 20:39] He quotes a study by Wan et al. (2016) on alleged animal fossils from the Lantian Formation in China and does not conceal their admission that Ediacaran candidate animals represent “frustrating cases for animal affinities.” Farina uncritically accepts this study and does not recognize that it is highly problematic. Here is just one example: the authors speculated that Xiuningella could be a bilaterian worm but admitted that alternatively it “could be an epibenthic algal organism, with the bulbous structure being a holdfast, the stalk being a stem, and the cylindrical tube representing a coenocytic siphonous thallus.” Since macroalgae totally dominate the Lantian biota and clear animals are lacking, this seems like a much more reasonable interpretation. The authors even admitted that for all their discussed candidate organisms “definitive evidence for an animal affinity is lacking.” We’ve already discussed in this series the problematic nature of Lantianella, but what if it should indeed be a cnidarian as speculated by Wan et al.? So what? I hate to say it another time, but Meyer has acknowledged the possible existence of Ediacaran cnidarians, so this would be just another one. The problem of the Cambrian Explosion is the abrupt appearance of numerous different body plans of bilaterian animal phyla, and cnidarians are not one of them. Farina is here again shooting down caricatures of Meyer’s arguments, which shows that this wannabe “professor” cannot refute the actual arguments. 

(see here for a precise definition of this technical term of cladistics) of Metazoa or Eumetazoa, and not even a homology within Metazoans has been established. Furthermore, the fractal growth (Seilacher 1992, Gehling & Narbonne 2007) of the Ediacaran frond-like taxa differs from anything we know in metazoans. Taken together, this evidence suggests a convergence and shows that Dunn et al. (2021) definitely presented a case of invalid phylogenetic reasoning even from the viewpoint of mainstream evolutionary cladistics. But I can only repeat the same thing ad nauseam: Even if Charnia were a stem-metazoan, if would contribute absolutely zilch to solving the problem of the Cambrian Explosion of bilaterian animal phyla. 

Please, Not Again 

[TC 22:55] Farina introduces Haootia quadriformis as almost certainly a cnidarian. Please, not again. Meyer acknowledges Ediacaran cnidarians, thus it is irrelevant if there is another one. Maybe Haootia indeed is a cnidarian, but not so fast: A recent paper (Dunn et al. 2022) about Ediacaran cnidarians is not so confident and even excludes Haootia from their phylogenetic analysis because of its uncertain position. This study instead suggested that the new fossil Auroralumina from Charnwood Forest is a putative Ediacaran crown group cnidarian, which is problematic as well (see my earlier comments). Even if Haootia and Auroralumina are Ediacaran cnidarians, they would just confirm what Meyer acknowledged anyway and that does nothing to explain the sudden appearance of bilaterian animal phyla in the Cambrian Explosion. This is getting ridiculous! 

[TC 23:07] Farina shows a screenshot from the study of Evans et al. (2021), which places Tribrachidium, Dickinsonia, Ikaria, and Kimberella in the Eumetazoan tree with the latter two taxa as putative Bilateria. Well, at least the latter two taxa are a bit more interesting as they have been claimed to be bilaterian animals. I discussed this paper in a previous article (Bechly 2021c), and have critically discussed all four genera in great detail in others (Bechly 2018c, 2020b, 2020g, 2021c, 2022e). Therefore, I will refer to those articles and just include a few notes here:

[TC 23:18] Farina first presents Tribrachidium of the extinct phylum Trilobozoa as another stem-eumetazoan, which allegedly was a benthic, sessile, suspension feeder. In my article series on trilobozoans (Bechly 2021c) I showed that the suspension feeder interpretation by Rahman et al. (2015) is dubious and controversial, judging from up-to-date mainstream science that contradicts this interpretation. The authors even admit that the related genera within Trilobozoa or Triradialomorpha “appear to lack the apical ‘pits’ that we hypothesize are key to this method of feeding in Tribrachidium,” which basically debunks their hypothesis as emphasized by McMenamin (2016: 60-62). New research has also revealed the internal anatomy of trilobozoans (Taylor et al. 2017, Zakrevskaya & Ivantsov 2020) and it is incompatible with the suspension feeding hypothesis and unlike any known animal body plans. Many experts therefore still consider the enigmatic trilobozoans as a “failed evolutionary experiment in multicellular eukaryote body plans” (Droser et al. 2017, Hall et al. 2018). Even Rahman et al. (2015) admitted that “Tribrachidium is best understood as a multicellular eukaryote with uncertain relationships to crown Metazoa.” Trilobozoans were very aberrant and clearly not ancestral to any of the Cambrian animal phyla and thus are completely irrelevant for solving the problem of the Cambrian Explosion. 

[TC 23:33] Second in Farina’s list is Dickinsonia, which he introduces as a stem-bilaterian, based on alleged strong ichnological, developmental, and biomarker evidence. The ichnological (trace fossil) evidence is not strong but controversial, and some leading experts think that the alleged traces are just successive imprints of passively drifting specimens (McIlroy et al. 2009), and conclude that “there is no evidence from within material of Dickinsonia from Ediacara, or from any other material yet known, of true escape trails, faecal trails or locomotion traces” (Brasier & Antcliffe 2008). New results suggest that the developmental evidence is not only weak, but actually incompatible with an animal nature for Dickinsonia (Retallack 2022). Another recent study by Runnegar (2022) showed “that the biomarker evidence supports a lifestyle based on poriferan-style phagocytosis rather than bilaterian extracellular digestion.” The absence of a gut was also suggested by the biomarker study of Bobrovskiy et al. (2022). Runnegar also confirmed that at least some dickinsoniids had glide symmetry rather than bilateral symmetry and suggested that “Seilacher’s characterization of them as fluid-filled ‘pneus’ may serve as the current null hypothesis.” Cabey (2020) concluded that “the phylogenetic relationships of the genus Dickinsonia remain still undetermined.” This all supports my critical discussion of Dickinsonia and its rejection as a bilaterian animal (Bechly 2018c, Bechly 2022e). 

symmetry in Cnidaria. Cabey (2020) agrees that “whether Kimberella is a bilaterian or a coelenterate-grade animal is still unresolved.” Again, my critique was recently confirmed by Runnegar (2022), who agreed that Kimberella “might be an animal of cnidarian grade” and even thinks that “it is possible to regard Kimberella as some kind of foraging anemone.” Of course, it is also possible that Kimberella and Yilingia will still turn out to document the existence of two bilaterian groups of uncertain affinity prior to the Cambrian period, as suggested by a very recent biomarker study (Bobrovskiy et al. 2022), which suggested the presence of a gut based on molecular signatures of supposed gut content. However, their unique specializations strongly suggest that they could only represent extinct side branches but could not be directly ancestral to any of the numerous Cambrian animal phyla, and thus do not resolve their enigmatic origin. Meyer in Darwin’s Doubt also discusses Kimberella and generously acknowledges that it could be a bilaterian. What is Farina’s problem, then? Meyer can hardly be blamed for not having discussed Yilingia, which was described years after his book was published. 

The Nama Assemblage 

[TC 24:33] Farina turns to the Nama assemblage and mentions three fossil taxa: Cloudina, Yilingia, and Namacalathus.

[TC 24:48] Concerning the tubular fossil Cloudina he correctly says that it has recently been argued to be likely an annelid. I disputed this attribution in an earlier article (Bechly 2020a) based purely on mainstream science. He immediately acknowledges that other cloudinomorphs were rather attributed to cnidarians, but instead of doubting one of the two attributions, he suggests that cloudinomorphs might not be a natural group of related organisms.

[TC 25:12] He describes Yilingia (Chen et al. 2019) as a segmented bilaterian, possibly either an annelid or a panarthropod. That’s indeed what the paper and the accompanying media reports suggested. However, there is a big problem because annelids (belonging to lophotrochozoans) and panarthropods (belonging to ecdysozoans) are not closely related and their similar body plan is generally considered to be a convergence. This makes it very weak evidence because another convergence could be quite likely. Farina also says that a relationship with panarthropods would be supported by the trilobed structure as in trilobites. However, this structure does not even belong to the ground plan of Panarthropoda and is absent in basal groups such as Cambrian lobopods. Farina seems to get his information from Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yilingia) and other unreliable sources. Also, the metameric pattern of Yilingia is very different from any known panarthropod or annelid (Evolution News 2019, Bechly 2020b). [TC 25:29] Finally, he claims that Namacalathus appears to be an early relative of brachiopods and bryozoans. I criticized this attribution on many grounds (Bechly 2020e, 2020f, 2021a, 2021b), not the least of which is that brachiopods and bryozoans are of questionable relationship and the homology of the used similarities has been disputed and refuted by the experts even for these two living groups. The phylogenetic attribution of Namacalathus was therefore objectively based on invalid arguments. A lot of nonsense gets published in peer-reviewed scientific articles (just think of the replication crisis) and it requires a bit of expertise to separate the wheat from the chaff and to recognize poor arguments. Farina clearly lacks any expertise to do this. 

The thumb print of JEHOVAH: Botanic edition.

Viewing Chinese Lanterns in Pittsburgh 

Paul Nelson 

On the day after Thanksgiving, I was viewing Abutilon pictum — commonly known as the Chinese lantern  plant — at Phipps Conservatory and Botanical Gardens, Pittsburgh, PA. While being charmed by its whimsical beauty, I also mused about the genetic coding requirements for the changes in protein expression and timing (during development) to give its precise floral morphology. Psalm 111:2.  

 

Whither the Christian nation?

America’s Unchristian Beginnings : Founding Fathers: Most, despite preachings of our pious right, were deists who rejected the divinity of Jesus. 

BY STEVEN MORRIS 

The Christian right is trying to rewrite the history of the United States as part of its campaign to force its view of religion on others who ask merely to be left alone. According to this Orwellian revision, the Founding Fathers were devout Christians who envisioned a Christian nation.

Not true. The early presidents and patriots were generally deists or Unitarians, believing in some form of impersonal Providence but rejecting the divinity of Jesus and the relevance of the Bible.

* Thomas Paine, pamphleteer whose manifestoes encouraged the faltering spirits of the country and aided materially in winning the War of Independence: “I do not believe in the creed professed by the Jewish church, by the Roman church, by the Greek church, by the Turkish church, by the Protestant church, nor by any church that I know of. Each of those churches accuse the other of unbelief; and for my own part, I disbelieve them all.” 

* George Washington, first President: He seems to have had the characteristic unconcern of the 18th-Century deist for the forms and creeds of institutional religions. Although he often referred to Providence as an impersonal force, remote and abstract, he never declared himself to be a Christian, either in contemporary reports or his voluminous correspondence.

Washington championed the cause of freedom from religious intolerance and compulsion. When John Murray, a Universalist who denied the existence of hell, was invited to become an Army chaplain, other chaplains petitioned Washington to reject him. Instead, Washington gave him the appointment. On his deathbed, Washington uttered no words of a religious nature and did not call for a clergyman to be in attendance. 

* John Adams, second President: Drawn to the study of law but facing pressure from his father to become a clergyman, he wrote that he found among lawyers “a noble air and gallant achievements” but among the clergy, the “pretended sanctity of some absolute dunces.” Late in life he wrote, “Twenty times in the course of my late reading, have I been upon the point of breaking out, ‘This would be the best of all possible Worlds, if there were no Religion in it!!!’ ” It was during Adams’ presidency that the Senate ratified the Treaty of Peace and Friendship, which states in Article XI that “The Government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian religion.” This treaty with the Islamic state of Tripoli had been written and concluded by Joel Barlow during Washington’s Administration. 

* Thomas Jefferson , third President and author of the Declaration of Independence: “I trust that there is not a young man now living in the United States who will not die an Unitarian.” He referred to the Book of Revelations as “the ravings of a maniac” and in further criticism of the Bible he wrote: “The Christian priesthood, finding the doctrines of Christ leveled to every understanding and too plain to need explanation, saw, in the mysticisms of Plato, materials with which they might build up an artificial system which might, from its indistinctness, admit everlasting controversy, give employment for their order, and introduce it to profit, power and preeminence. The doctrines which flowed from the lips of Jesus himself are within the comprehension of a child; but thousands of volumes have not yet explained the Platonisms engrafted on them: and for this obvious reason that nonsense can never be explained.” 

* James Madison, fourth President and father of the Constitution: “Religious bondage shackles and debilitates the mind and unfits it for every noble enterprise,” he wrote. “During almost 15 centuries has the legal establishment of Christianity been on trial. What have been its fruits? More or less in all places, pride and indolence in the Clergy, ignorance and servility in the laity; in both, superstition, bigotry and persecution.” 

* Ethan Allen , whose capture of Ft. Ticonderoga while commanding the Green Mountain Boys helped inspire the country to pursue the War of Independence: “That Jesus Christ was not God is evident from his own words.” Allen also wrote that he was generally “Denominated a deist, the reality of which I never disputed, being conscious I am no Christian.” Allen stopped his own wedding ceremony when the judge asked if he promised “to live with Fanny Buchanan agreeable to the laws of God.” Allen refused to answer until the judge agreed that the God referred to was the god of nature, and the laws those “written in the great book of Nature.” 

* Benjamin Franklin, delegate to the Continental Congress and the Constitutional Convention: “As to Jesus of Nazareth, my Opinion of whom you particularly desire, I think the System of Morals and his Religion . . . has received various corruption changes, and I have, with most of the present Dissenters in England, some Doubts as to his divinity; tho’ it is a question I do not dogmatize upon, having never studied it, and think it needless to busy myself with it now, when I expect soon an Opportunity of knowing the Truth with less Trouble.” He died a month later, a deist, not a Christian. 

Ps. America's founders and doubtless many others were pushed away from the JEHOVAH of the bible because Christendom's version of him is the author of a hyper politicized gospel that is OK with attempting to force an outward piety upon society by force of arms. And both traditionalists and modernists are guilty of this vice lest anyone conclude that I am picking sides.

 

On Darwinism's failure as a predictive model II

 Failed Darwinian predictions 

Cornelius G Hunter 

addition to the DNA code, there are other fundamental molecular processes that appear to be common to all life. One intriguing example is DNA replication which copies both strands of the DNA molecule, but in different directions. Evolution predicts these fundamental processes to be common to all life. Indeed this was commonly said to be an important successful prediction for the theory. As Niles Eldredge explained, the “underlying chemical uniformity of life” was a severe test that evolution passed with flying colors. (Eldredge, 41) Likewise Christian de Duve declared that evolution is in part confirmed by the fact that all extant living organisms function according to the same principles. (de Duve, 1) And Michael Ruse concluded that the essential macromolecules of life help to make evolution beyond reasonable doubt. (Ruse, 4)

But this conclusion that the fundamental molecular processes within the cell are common to all species was superficial. In later years, as the details were investigated, important differences between species emerged. For example, key DNA replication proteins surprisingly “show very little or no sequence similarity between bacteria and archaea/eukaryotes.” (Leipe) Also different DNA replication processes have been discovered. These results were not what were expected:

In particular, and counter-intuitively, given the central role of DNA in all cells and the mechanistic uniformity of replication, the core enzymes of the replication systems of bacteria and archaea (as well as eukaryotes) are unrelated or extremely distantly related. Viruses and plasmids, in addition, possess at least two unique DNA replication systems, namely, the protein-primed and rolling circle modalities of replication. This unexpected diversity makes the origin and evolution of DNA replication systems a particularly challenging and intriguing problem in evolutionary biology. (Koonin)

Some evolutionists are reconsidering the assumption that all life on Earth shares the same basic molecular architecture and biochemistry, and instead examining the possibility of independent evolution, and multiple origins of fundamentally different life forms. (Cleland, Leipe) 

References 

Cleland, Carol. 2007. “Epistemological issues in the study of microbial life: alternative terran biospheres?.” Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 38:847-861.

de Duve, Christian. 1995. Vital Dust. New York: BasicBooks.

Eldredge, Niles. 1982. The Monkey Business. New York: Washington Square Press.

Koonin, E. 2006. “Temporal order of evolution of DNA replication systems inferred by comparison of cellular and viral DNA polymerases.” Biology Direct 18:1-39.

Leipe, D., L. Aravind, E. Koonin. 1999. “Did DNA replication evolve twice independently?.” Nucleic Acids Research 27:3389-3401.

Ruse, Michael. 1986. Taking Darwin Seriously. New York: Basil Blackwell.

How the quest for the thumb print of JEHOVAH can drive science.

Religious Intuition Can Lead to Scientific Discovery: The Cases of Copernicus and Ferguson 

Robert Shedinger 

A common criticism of intelligent design holds that ID is more religion than science. This criticism is problematic as ID possesses a strong and growing empirical foundation. The purpose of this criticism, however, is to undermine any claims to truth associated with ID. As the argument goes, religion is subjective and faith-based while science is objective and empirically based. Religion therefore almost by definition can never provide reliable insights about the nature and structure of the physical universe. Thus, if ID is religion, it cannot be true. This would all be well and good except for the fact that there are at least two noteworthy examples of religious reasoning leading directly to scientific hypotheses later empirically confirmed to be true.

When I first began teaching at Luther College over twenty years ago, I had a senior colleague who held a PhD in the history of science from the University of Wisconsin, Madison. Bruce Wrightsman (who has since passed away) shared with me an article he had published back in 1980 in an obscure anthology titled “The Legitimation of Scientific Belief: Theory Justification by Copernicus.” My colleague argued persuasively that Nicholas Copernicus possessed no empirical evidence to place the sun at the center of the solar system but that he rather had relied on a religious justification. It is a shame this article has not garnered more attention. 

Epicycles and Equants 

By the 16th century, the old Ptolemaic system had become rather messy with its bevy of ad hoc features like epicycles and equants designed to keep the geocentric system consistent with observations. Messy as it was, the Ptolemaic system did remain consistent with observations and retained its practical use as a calendrical tool. There was no compelling empirical evidence suggesting a heliocentric solar system (a point supported by Harvard astronomer Owen Gingerich in God’s Planet). 

Copernicus, however, viewed the Ptolemaic system as a monstrosity. The God he believed in was the great artisan of the universe, and such a God would never create something as messy and clumsy as the Ptolemaic system. Placing the sun at the center of the solar system led to a simpler and more elegant model, one more pleasing to Copernicus’ religiously inspired aesthetic sensibilities. And it was on this basis that his theory rested. In Bruce Wrightsman’s words: 

One may not like Copernicus’s reasons for coming to believe in and justifying his system but that is not a rational ground for refusing to accept them as reasons. We must therefore remind ourselves that scientific investigation had much broader implications for Copernicus than it has for many today and included those purposes which we classify as religious and extra-scientific.1 

To be sure, Copernicus’ theory flew in the face of church doctrine, forcing Copernicus to delay publication out of fear of ecclesiastical reprisal. Yet despite the fact that Copernicus’ religiously inspired ideas about the structure of the cosmos may have been deemed heretical according to the orthodoxies of his day, they were religious nonetheless. And when Galileo later began peering at the night sky through his telescope, Copernicus’ religiously inspired aesthetics were found to have led him to truth about the structure of the solar system! Empirical evidence came after Copernicus had already proposed his theory on religious grounds, not before.  

“A Mean Opinion of the Divine Wisdom” 

A second example comes from the work of a lesser-known figure, 18th-century Scottish astronomer James Ferguson. Ferguson, like Copernicus, contradicted the religious orthodoxies of his day by suggesting that the stars that light up the night sky represented bodies like our sun accompanied by their own planetary systems and perhaps even extraterrestrial life. Orthodox beliefs of the time viewed the heavens as existing entirely for the aesthetic pleasure of humans on Earth. But according to Ferguson: 

It is no ways probable that the Almighty, who always acts with infinite wisdom and does nothing in vain, should create so many glorious Suns, fit for so many important purposes, and place them at such distances from one another, without proper objects near enough to be benefitted by their influences. Whoever imagines they were created only to give a faint glimmering light to the inhabitants of this Globe, must have a very superficial knowledge of Astronomy, and a mean opinion of the Divine Wisdom.2 

Clearly Ferguson possessed no empirical evidence suggesting the existence of planetary systems revolving around extra-solar suns. But his religious reasoning led him to propose that such things should exist. And here we are today with 21st-century technology continuing to empirically confirm the existence of extra-solar planets on a nearly daily basis! 

Science and Aesthetics 

These examples challenge any notion that religious thinking can never lead to true understandings about the nature and structure of the physical universe. Interestingly, aesthetic sensibilities continue to drive science in the case of theoretical physicists’ fascination with elegance, simplicity, and grand unification as a criterion of fundamental truth (even if this aesthetic sensibility has been divorced from its religious roots). 

ID is not religion. But even if we were to concede falsely that it is, such a characterization is irrelevant to the question of whether it is true. Religion may not always lead to truth about the physical world, but it is patently false to say that it never has or never can. 

Notes 

1)Bruce Wrightsman, “The Legitimation of Scientific Belief: Theory Justification by Copernicus” in T. Nickles, ed., Scientific Discovery: Case Studies (D. Reidel, 1980), 62.

2)Quoted in Michael J. Crowe, “Astronomy and Religion (1780-1915): Four Case Studies Involving Ideas of Extraterrestrial Life” in John Hedley Brooke, et al., eds., Science in Theistic Contexts, Osiris 16 (2001): 212

 

The thumb print of JEHOVAH :human body edition.

 Your Intelligently Designed Body Is a System of Systems 

Howard Glicksman and Steve Laufmann 

Editor’s note: We are delighted to present this excerpt from Your Designed Body, the new book by engineer Steve Laufmann and physician Howard Glicksman. 

To be alive, every cell in your body needs solutions to a complicated set of problems — containment, gates, controls, framing, transport, energy, information, and reproduction. Zooming out from a single cell, the human body as a whole is made up of around thirty trillion cells (a figure that varies widely with an individual’s size). It needs to solve all the same kinds of problems that a cell does, plus quite a few more. And it needs new ways to solve old problems, ways completely different from how the same problems were solved at the cellular level. 

For example, a single-celled organism is like a microscopic island of life. The cell gets what it needs and gets rid of what it doesn’t need from its surrounding environment. In contrast, a large multi-cellular organism (like you) is more like a continent with a deep and dark interior. Most of the cells reside deep in the interior with no direct access to the body’s surrounding environment. For a multicellular organism, then, harvesting the raw materials its cells need and getting rid of toxic by-products becomes a major logistical problem.

Several hundred such problems must be solved for a complex body to be alive. And many of the solutions to these basic problems generate new problems that must also be solved, or that constrain other solutions in critical ways. The result is that for a complex body to be alive, thousands of deeply interconnected problems must be solved, and many of them solved at all times, or life will fail.

Additionally, many of the problems the body faces are much more complex than those solved in any individual cell. For example, while it takes impressive engineering for cells to sense their environment (a process not well understood), sensing poses a considerably greater engineering challenge for a human body, since it involves much more sophisticated forms of sensing — like vision, hearing, taste, smell, and the fine-touch sensing in your hands.

The bottom line is that, as hard as it is for a cell to maintain life, it’s much harder for an organism with a complex body plan like yours.

Hard Problems Take Clever Solutions 

Together, the many thousands of problems the body must solve for survival and reproduction require many thousands of ingenious solutions. Most of these solutions need special-purpose equipment across all levels of the body plan, from specifically adapted molecular machinery (like hemoglobin molecules) to specialized cells (like red blood cells) to tissues (like bone marrow) to whole body systems (like the cardiovascular system). This may involve hundreds of thousands of parts, replicated in millions of places. 

Solutions to this class of problems always exhibit four interesting characteristics: 

1. Specialization 

It takes the right parts to make a working whole. Each part must perform a function with respect to the larger system. Each part must be made of the right materials, fine-tuned to precise tolerances, and equipped with suitable interfaces with the other parts. This is a design principle known as separation of concerns. Virtually every designed object in human experience is based on this design strategy. And this appears to be equally true in biological systems, including virtually every capability in the human body. 

2. Organization 

The parts must be in the right places, arranged and interconnected to enable the function of the whole. Each part must work with the other parts in an integrated way. The parts are often made of different materials, where a material is chosen for how its particular properties support the specific needs of that particular part and how it must function in light of the whole. This is a design principle known as the rule of composition. It counterbalances the separation of concerns principle. Separation of concerns breaks large problems into subproblems that are (slightly) easier to solve, while the rule of composition puts the solutions to the subproblems (the parts) together such that the function of the whole is achieved. 

3. Integration 

The parts must have exactly those interfaces that enable the parts to work together. With bones, this obviously involves their shapes, especially at their connection and articulation points (the joints). For other body systems this can involve structural support, alignment, shock absorption, gating and transport systems, electrical signaling, chemical signaling, exchange of complex information, and integrated logic. 

4. Coordination 

The parts must be coordinated such that each performs its respective function or functions at the right time. This usually requires one or more control systems, either active or passive, and usually some form of sensing and communication between the parts and the controls. This property is achieved by orchestration or choreography, which differ in the ways the controls are achieved, the former by a more centralized approach and the latter by a more distributed approach. In an old Chevy pickup, this function for the engine is achieved by a camshaft. In ATP Synthase, this is also achieved by a camshaft.

In designing a complex system, all four of the above factors must be considered across the whole when designing each of the parts.

When a system has all the right parts, in all the right places, made of the right materials, with the right specifications, doing their respective functions, at all the right times, to achieve an overall, system-level function that none of the parts can do on its own, you have what is known as a coherent system. Coherence, in this sense, is a functional requirement for all non-trivial systems. Moreover, in life the systems are never standalone — there are always interdependencies between and among the various component systems and parts. The human body is composed of coherent, interdependent systems. 

Of course, each part in a larger system may be a system itself, composed of specialized parts, which may also be systems composed of specialized parts, and so on, forming a hierarchy of design. As with most human-designed artifacts, living systems consist of layers of systems and subsystems — a system of systems. This is exemplified in the human body. 

The Scope of the Body’s Solutions 

It takes a lot of work to keep a sawmill running. Logs need to be obtained, sorted, and brought in. Cut lumber needs to be taken away for further processing. The motors need electricity. The saw blades need to be changed out and sharpened. The workers need coffee. Lots of coffee. All these require various systems within the larger system.

Similarly, to keep your cells alive and working properly, your body requires eleven major organ systems1 to distribute, dispose, defend, generate energy, and perform other crucial tasks. The systems and their roles:

The respiratory system takes in the oxygen (O2) your cells need and gets rid of excess carbon dioxide (CO2).

The gastrointestinal (digestive) system takes in the water, sugar, fat, protein, salt, vitamins, and minerals your cells need.

The renal/urinary system rids your body of excess nitrogen (ammonia, urea) and helps maintain your blood pressure and control your body’s water and salt content.

The cardiovascular system pumps blood throughout your body to provide “just in time” delivery of supplies to every organ no matter what you’re doing. It’s also critical for managing temperature, dissipating excess heat, and distributing chemical signals throughout the body.

The integumentary system (skin) protects your body from the outside world while helping control your temperature through sweating. It continually replenishes itself from the inside out and is remarkably good at repairing itself when it gets cut or scraped.

The skeletal system (bones) provides support and protection for many of your vital organs (like your brain, spinal cord, lungs, and heart) and is the framework for the muscles. Its structures, organization, and proportions enable an amazing range of movement and activity. 

The motor system (muscles) allows the body to move around, stay balanced, and handle things. It’s capable of a wide range of strength demands yet possesses extraordinarily fine controls.

The nervous system (nerves and brain) allows the body to sense your surroundings, maintain your body’s vital functions, and control your activities. It also allows you to be awake and aware — to think, communicate, imagine, and create.

The immune/lymphatic system protects you from invading pathogens.

The endocrine system sends out hormones to regulate things like your metabolism and growth.

The reproductive system, male and female, enables new human life.

Each of these is a specialized subsystem in the body. The body needs all of them, organized properly, and coordinated to remarkably fine tolerances. In turn, each of these subsystems is a complete system, itself composed of many specialized subsystems and parts, organized in specific ways, and precisely coordinated.

It made Darwin doubt; it makes Darwinists defiant.

Untangling “Professor Dave’s” Confusion about the Cambrian Explosion 

Günter Bechly 

In a series at Evolution News, I am currently reviewing the attack (Farina 2022) on Stephen Meyer and Darwin’s Doubt by popular science YouTuber Dave Farina (aka Professor Dave). You will find my first post in the series here. We have seen the absurdly low quality of this individual’s video. But there is much more. I have added timecodes in square brackets for easier reference.

[TC 7:44] If all is well with the fossil record as evidence for Darwinian gradualism, as Mr. Farina claims, then why does he have to raise his next point, invoking the “obvious limitations to the fossil record” due to rare fossilization and sampling bias? He says that Dr. Meyer’s rejection of the “artifact hypothesis” fails to acknowledge the validity of these limitations. Instead, he says, Meyer lied about the Doushantuo Formation (more about that later). However, it is Farina, who is distorting the truth, as Meyer in Darwin’s Doubt discusses at length the limitations of the fossil record and explores in detail why these limitations cannot explain away the absence of the assumed ancestors of the Cambrian phyla in the Ediacaran strata (Meyer 2013a: 56–62). My article on the demise of the artifact hypothesis should settle this issue beyond reasonable doubt (Bechly 2020d), because numerous Ediacaran localities of the Burgess-Shale-type could and would have preserved even small and soft-bodied assumed ancestors of the Cambrian phyla but there are none. The same was acknowledged by Scheffer (2009), who said “it could be that earlier rocks were not as good for preserving fossils. However, very well-preserved fossils do exist from earlier periods, and it is now generally accepted that the Cambrian explosion was real.” The artifact hypothesis was also rejected by the leading experts Erwin & Valentine (2013) in their book on the Cambrian Explosion (see Luskin 2013a for quotes).

By the way: if Farina or anybody else should respond that such Evolution News articles don’t count because they are not peer-reviewed scientific papers, you just have to mention that all those articles are heavily based on such peer-reviewed mainstream studies and only report and comment on them. You will find all the references there. 

[TC 8:50] Farina disputes the claim that “Animals appear for the first time in the Cambrian explosion,” which Meyer made in a popular video. Farina pedantically says this is objectively wrong because Meyer himself mentioned sponges and Kimberella as a probable simple animal from the Ediacaran. Therefore, Farina considers the Cambrian only as a diversification of animal life not its origin. This is either false or misleading. It is false if it refers to the core problem of the Cambrian Explosion, which is the abrupt origin of most bilaterian animal phyla or body plans. It is misleading if it refers to the origin of animals in the sense of Metazoa because (as Farina correctly noted) Meyer never disputes the existence of Precambrian metazoans such as sponges and cnidarians, and even acknowledges Kimberella as a possible bilaterian (though there are good reasons to doubt that Kimberella was a mollusk or a bilaterian (see further on for a critical discussion of Kimberella). 

Dating the Cambrian Explosion 

[TC 9:22] Farina claims that the dating of the Cambrian Explosion as 530-520 mya is wrong too. He cites Erwin et al. (2011) as establishing:

Earliest skeletal fossils in the latest Ediacaran

Plates, spines, shells in the Fortunian 541-530 mya

First occurrences of metazoan phyla in the latest Ediacaran 555 mya with a dramatic rise of 25 mya in the first stages of the Cambrian.

[TC 10:48] Farina therefore thinks that the Cambrian Explosion was at least 25 my (not 10 my) long and Meyer should have known this because Erwin’s paper appeared before Meyer’s book. Well, I actually agree that the total length of the Cambrian Explosion, as documented by the fossil record, may have been about 25 million years. But this point is immaterial because many experts also agree that the main pulse was much shorter and precisely in the range given by Meyer (see the numerous studies quoted in review articles by Luskin 2013 and CSC 2019). Here are just two prominent examples:

Bowring et al. (1993) concluded that the “period of exponential increase of diversification lasted only 5 to 6 m.y. … it is unlikely to have exceeded 10 m.y.”

In the standard textbook on the Cambrian Explosion, the renowned experts Erwin & Valentine (2013: p. 5) (yes, that’s the same Douglas Erwin who was lead author of the study quoted by Farina) dated the main diversification to a “geologically brief interval between about 530 to 520 Ma.” That’s 10 million years, exactly as stated by Meyer. Even the older Erwin et al. (2011) paper quoted by Farina found 13 bilaterian animal phyla originating in the Lower Cambrian Stage 3 (see his Supplementary Information), which lasted about 7 million years and includes the famous Sirius Passet and Chengjiang biota. 

Furthermore, the fact that the first fossils found of different Cambrian animal phyla are somewhat spread out in time does not at all contradict a much narrower event for their origin, because the so-called Signor-Lipps effecthas to be taken into account. This effect refers to the fact that the oldest and youngest discovered fossils often fail to represent the actual first and last occurrences of these taxa in the history of life. Finally, it does not make a significant difference for the problem of the Cambrian Explosion whether it lasted 5 million years or 25 million years, because even the latter range would be orders of magnitude too short to accommodate the origin and spreading of the required genetic changes, based on standard population genetics (see further on for this waiting time problem). 

Two Phases of the Cambrian Explosion 

[TC 11.07] Farina cites more recent research by Zhuralev & Wood (2018), who suggested two phases of the Cambrian Explosion with two separate radiations, one of stem lineages 542-513 mya, and one of crown lineages from 513-485 my (connecting with the onset of the Great Ordovician Biodiversification Event, aka GOBE). This is totally irrelevant, though, as the problem of Cambrian Explosion is the origin of the body plans in the first radiation and not their diversification in the second one. That there were many other later radiations is not under dispute, but the narrow windows of time for most of these radiations show that the Cambrian Explosion is just one of many examples of abrupt origins that contradict gradualist Darwinian expectations (Bechly & Meyer 2017, Bechly 2021e). It makes the problem worse not better.

[TC 11:41] Farina misrepresents the claim for the suddenness of the Cambrian Explosion. He says the claim is that “an enormous number of species showed up in an unimaginable short period of time.” Nope, that is not the problem at all. The problem is the abrupt origin of complex body plans of bilaterian animal phyla, without any fossil evidence for their gradual evolution in the preceding layers. He calls it dishonesty to exploit the apparent suddenness suggested by the word “Explosion” but fails to mention that this suddenness is emphasized in tons of technical papers on the Cambrian Explosion, which was named “Explosion” and “Evolution’s Big Bang” for a reason. Again, see Luskin (2013b) for an extensive review of all the mainstream technical papers that use words like “sudden” or “abrupt” to describe the Cambrian Explosion and the origin of the phyla and their respective body plans. [TC 12:00] Farina says that in actuality the two phases of the Cambrian Explosion took 70 million years. Well, except for the authors of the mentioned study and their research group, hardly any respected expert on the Cambrian Explosion ever claimed that it spanned 70 million years, mainly because the term “Cambrian Explosion” only refers to the first radiation. Another recent study seeks to identify three phases of the Cambrian Explosion but estimates its maximal duration to be about 40 million years (Zhang & Shu 2021). However, these authors qualify this maximum estimate with the following admission: “Most body plans emerged within [my emphasis] this time window. The birth of each body plan might be even in a much shorter[my emphasis] time interval.” They also ask if the Cambrian Explosion poses a challenge to evolution, but with hand-waving dismiss this dangerous possibility, simply maintaining that millions of years is plenty of time for evolutionary change. 

A Long Time, Biologically Speaking? 

[TC 12:10] Like the latter authors, Farina also claims that the Cambrian Explosion was a long time biologically for the diversification to take place. Really? Such bold claims, whether made by scientists or by YouTubers, are not science but just an unsubstantiated opinion. If real hard science like the math of population genetics is used to address this question, the Darwinian house of cards collapses (see further on for this waiting time problem). Also, the available time was certainly not as long as claimed. How did Zhang & Shu (2021) arrive at their maximum estimate of 40 million years? Similar to Daley et al. (2018), they simply took the documented absence of metazoan communities at 560 mya as their starting point in the Ediacaran and the full development of the metazoan communities at 521 mya in the Lower Cambrian as their end point. However, the Cambrian Stage 1 begins at 541 million years and there is no fossil record of uncontroversial metazoan communities prior to this, as explicitly granted by Daley et al. and others. Zhang & Shu simply added 20 million years of the terminal Ediacaran to the Cambrian Explosion. They did so without any evidence whatsoever. Casey Luskin (2013b) wrote an excellent article about how mainstream experts support Meyer’s dating and description of the suddenness of the Cambrian Explosion, which totally debunks Farina’s claims (also see CSC 2019).  

A Word from the Experts 

I don’t have much to add to Luskin’s (2013b) article, apart from a few more references from some true experts:

Scheffer (2009: 169-170): “The collapse of the Ediacaran fauna is followed by the spectacular radiation of novel life-forms known as the Cambrian explosion. All of the main body plans that we know now evolved in as little as about 10 million years. It might have been thought that this apparent explosion of diversity might be an artifact. For instance, it could be that earlier rocks were not as good for preserving fossils. However, very well preserved fossils do exist from earlier periods, and it is now generally accepted that the Cambrian explosion was real.”

Erwin & Valentine (2013: 5-6): “[A] great variety and abundance of animal fossils appear in deposits dating from a geologically brief interval between about 530 to 520 Ma, early in the Cambrian period. During this time, nearly all the major living animal groups (phyla) that have skeletons first appeared as fossils (at least one appeared earlier). Surprisingly, a number of those localities have yielded fossils that preserve details of complex organs at the tissue level, such as eyes, guts, and appendages. In addition, several groups that were entirely soft-bodied and thus could be preserved only under unusual circumstances also first appear in those faunas. Because many of those fossils represent complex groups such as vertebrates (the subgroup of the phylum Chordata to which humans belong) and arthropods, it seems likely that all or nearly all the major phylum-level groups of living animals, including many small softbodied groups that we do not actually find as fossils, had appeared by the end of the early Cambrian. This geologically abrupt and spectacular record of early animal life is called the Cambrian explosion. …Taken at face value, the geologically abrupt appearance of Cambrian faunas with exceptional preservation suggested the possibility that they represented a singular burst of evolution, but the processes and mechanisms were elusive. Although there is truth to some of the objections, they have not diminished the magnitude or importance of the explosion. … Several lines of evidence are consistent with the reality of the Cambrian explosion.”

Lee et al. (2013): “The near-simultaneous appearance of most modern animal body plans (phyla) ∼530 million years ago during the Cambrian explosion is strong evidence for a brief interval of rapid phenotypic and genetic innovation … The abrupt appearance of most modern animal body plans (often ranked as phyla and classes) over half a billion years ago is one of the most important evolutionary events after the origin of life.”Briggs (2015): “We now know that the sudden appearance of fossils in the Cambrian (541–485 million years ago) is real and not an artefact of an imperfect fossil record … all the major animal groups evolved in a relatively short time during the Cambrian explosion.”

Buatois et al. (2016): “The majority of body plans were established during the Cambrian Explosion (CE), whereas the significant taxonomic increases during the Great Ordovician Biodiversification Event (GOBE) were manifest at lower taxonomic levels.”

Davis (2019): “The Cambrian explosion was far shorter than we thought.”

Cabey (2020): “Nevertheless, now, 150 years after The Origin, when an incomparably larger stock of animal fossils has been collected, Darwin’s gap remains, the abrupt appearance of Cambrian fossils is a reality, and we are still wondering about the forces and mechanisms that drove it. Despite the fact that, from time to time, a small number of students have questioned the reality of the Cambrian explosion on the same ground as Darwin, today’s consensus is that the Cambrian explosion is a scientific fact (Linnemann et al., 2019) and ‘The Cambrian explosion is real and its consequences set in motion a sea-change in evolutionary history’ (Conway Morris, 2000; Nichols et al., 2006).” 

Heger et al. (2020): “The Cambrian explosion was a unique animal radiation ~540 million years ago that produced the full range of body plans across bilaterians. The genetic mechanisms underlying these events are unknown.”

How short was the Cambrian Explosion? Recent evidence suggests that it may have been extremely short (Bechly 2021d). A study by Linnemann et al. (2018) demonstrated that the window of time between the latest appearance date (LAD) of the alien Ediacaran biota and the first appearance date (FAD) of the complex Cambrian biota was only 410,000 years. Again, we must take the Signor-Lipps effect into account, but you get an idea about the biological and geological abruptness of this event.

Furthermore, Farina’s claim that the Cambrian Explosion was a long time, biologically speaking, is nonsense. See the recent study by Daley et al. (2018) that I have discussed in two previous articles (Bechly 2018a, Bechly 2021d). The bottom line is that this study showed that only 13 million years were available for the transition from simple stem-metazoans to the fully developed and highly complex body plan of crown group arthropods, with exoskeleton, articulated legs, gut system, nervous system, and highly efficient compound eyes. This time span equals about the average longevity (5-10 my) of just two successive marine invertebrate species (Levinton 2001: 384, table 7.2). Of course, this does not mean that more overlapping speciation events could have happened during this time, but the comparison gives a good feeling for how short this time is in biological terms. This feeling can be corroborated with hard science and math: as correctly emphasized by Meyer in his book (Meyer 2013a), the standard mathematical tools of population genetics show that such a window of time is orders of magnitude too short to accommodate the waiting times for the origin and fixation of the required genetic changes (see further). 

TC 12:26] Farina claims that Meyer is dishonest for saying that “many animal phyla show up for the first time in the Cambrian.” This is beyond ridiculous as exactly this statement can be found all over the technical literature about the Cambrian Explosion. It is the single most uncontroversial fact about the Cambrian Explosion that is affirmed by virtually all experts. Even Dawkins himself says, “It is as though they were just planted there, without any evolutionary history.” (The Blind Watchmaker, 1986, pg. 229-230.) An invertebrate biology textbook states (Barnes et al. 2001: 9–10): “Most of the animal phyla that are represented in the fossil record first appear, ‘fully formed,’ in the Cambrian some 550 million years ago…The fossil record is therefore of no help with respect to the origin and early diversification of the various animal phyla.”

Apparently based on then-grad student Nick Matzke’s review of Darwin’s Doubt (Matzke 2013), Farina parrots the silly quibble about the arbitrary definition of the Linnean rank of a phylum. Yes, cladists are right about this critique but it completely misses the point.

[TC 12:55] In support of this irrelevant claim, Farina quotes Budd & Jensen (2000), who said that characterizing phyla by particular types of “body plan” seems to be based on an artifact of classification. That’s fine, but the issue of the body plans remains no matter what you call them. The issue is not the artifactual arbitrariness of Linnean categorical ranks, which may be happily granted. The abrupt origin of the very different body plans of Cambrian animal phyla does not disappear only because you dispense with the phylum category in a modern phylogenetic classification. The fundamental differences among the distinct body plans was the reason these groups of animals were categorized as different phyla in the first place. You can change the names however you want, but the biological facts persist. 

The mentioned paper by Budd & Jensen (2000) also redefined “a body plan [a]s that set of features plesiomorphically shared by extant taxa in a monophyletic clade.” Well, I’m sorry to say so, but the authors seem to be quite confused about cladistics, which Mr. Farina is of course not competent to recognize. Their definition is not only nonsensical but objectively erroneous, as it would imply that, for example, the body plan of vertebrates does not include vertebrae because those are synapomorphically shared and not symplesiomorphically shared by all vertebrates.

[TC 14:15] Therefore, it does not come as a big surprise that Farina incorrectly defines the term “plesiomorphic” as “traits that are shared by all the members of a group but are not unique to that group.” Nope, that is not what the term means. Plesiomorphic is just the technical cladistic term for a “primitive” or unmodified character state compared to the changed or derived state that is called apomorphic. Plesiomorphic and apomorphic only denote the polarity of a character and do not imply any statements of similarity between organisms. Only the terms “symplesiomorphy” and “synapomorphy” imply a shared character state and a homology hypothesis. Symplesiomorphic simply means a shared primitive homologous character state, such as multicellularity shared by ants and lions. But Farina’s definition would not even correctly define symplesiomorphy, because his definition would likewise apply for homoplasies (non-homologies) that are not uniquely shared, such as the wings of birds and insects. Farina doesn’t have a grasp of the basics of cladistic terminology. Maybe he should study my online “Glossary of Phylogenetic Systematics” to learn something before he tries to teach others.

 

A look at the root of the tree.

John West in Turin, Italy: Intelligent Design’s Roots and Fruit

Evolution News 

A new episode of ID the Future takes us to a conference in Turin, Italy, where scholar John West speaks about the roots of intelligent design, roots that stretch back to ancient Greek and Roman philosophers. In his talk, Dr. West also makes the case that design thinking was crucial to the rise of modern science, and he traces how Darwinism has eroded design thinking, fueled scientific racism, and undermined belief in human exceptionalism. West celebrates some of Italy’s contributions to Western civilization but also calls attention to Italian criminologist Cesare Lombroso, who championed various racist ideas undergirded by Darwinian thinking, disturbing work that West learned more about when he visited the Cesare Lombroso Museum in Turin. On the bright side, there has been a surge in skepticism about Darwinian thinking, West says, along with a powerful resurgence in design thinking. Listen to the podcast or download it here.