For the previous installment, see here.
Chapter 3
In 1995, Chinese scientists discovered even older Cambrian fossils near Chengjiang, China. At this site, even more Cambrian phyla and species were uncovered. This discovery also put to death the most popular form of the artifact hypothesis. One can no longer claim that the Pre-Cambrian lacks the Cambrian ancestors because the ancestors were too soft (no exoskeleton) or too small given the fact that the Chinese researchers discovered fossilized sponge embryos which are both microscopically tiny and entirely soft-bodied. They were preserved so beautifully that they were even able to see them in the midst of cell-division and identify the nucleus of the cells. Of course, even before this discovery, we knew that soft-bodied animals could be preserved in the fossil record since filament-shaped micro-organisms had already been discovered in the Precambrian, and many other soft-bodies animals, organs, and anatomical structures in both the Cambrian and Precambrian. According to Simon Conway-Morris, the Burgess Shale (Cambrian) contains 70K+ specimens, and 90% of them are either entirely soft-bodied or have a thin skeleton. The fossils discovered by the Chinese contained even more soft-body animals and preserved eyes, intestines, stomachs (and even the contents in the stomachs), mouths, and nerves. Furthermore, it would be impossible for some ancestors of the Cambrian phyla to function without their hard parts (such as an exoskeleton). They would have to have evolved together, and thus we would expect to find those ancestors in the Precambrian. If the Precambrian could preserve soft, tiny organisms, then why don’t we find the transitional forms leading up to the Cambrian phyla in the Precambrian?
Thinking to Believe 