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Earlier than thought: Freshwater animals

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Freshwater animals have been found at 435 million years ago, and were assumed to come later than saltwater ones. But “Come On In, the Water’s Fresh”, cries Sid Perkins at Science (17 May 2011):

Tiny burrows. A dense aggregation of U-shaped fossil burrows in 520-million- to 542-million-year-old rocks pushes back the appearance of freshwater ecosystems at least 85 million years, a new study suggests.Newly discovered fossils left by creatures burrowing in the sediments of an ancient riverbed push back the beginning of freshwater ecosystems by at least 85 million years. The find hints that there was little if any delay between the development of freshwater and marine ecosystems, contrary to what many biologists and paleontologists have proposed.

The theory had been that life started in the oceans and only later moved to fresh water because the latter lacked nutrients from organic substances, needed for life.

Most of the fossil burrows are U-shaped, with a depth of less than 5 centimeters, and the exits are spaced between 1 to 1.5 centimeters apart. Diameters of the burrows are typically about 1 millimeter, Droser says. “These were tiny little animals.” The same sorts of burrows are found elsewhere in marine sediments of that era, but there they are typically about 10 times larger—a size disparity similar to that seen between modern-day creatures that burrow in freshwater sediments and their sea-floor-dwelling kin, she adds.

The freshwater creatures are assumed to be worms or arthropods that lived in the area (due to the heavy concentration of burrows).

The burrows add to the mounting evidence that land-based ecosystems were evolving at the same time marine life was proliferating, during an era known as the Cambrian Explosion, Droser says.
Self-organization? Design?

The new find may cause other paleontologists to look at ancient riverine deposits more closely, Martin says. “A lot of people may not have looked simply because they didn’t expect to find anything.”

Why didn’t they? When does a slew of wrong predictions endanger a theory?

File under: ET (Earlier than Thought)

Comments
btw Astroman, if you're even still here, If I was ever going to insult someone it would have been you, but I didn't. I think the only response to all your ranting I did was to take three snips and make jokes. So please keep that in mind.Mung
May 20, 2011
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Why isn’t Mung banned for making insulting remarks like the one at number 2?
Probably because some of us have a long history here and didn't come in guns blazing and don't make it a practice of insulting people just for the sake of being insulting and therefore are given the benefit of the doubt. Also, many of us are self-moderating, and know when we've stepped over the line, and adjust our own behaviour without need of intervention.Mung
May 20, 2011
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Guess I should have used an emoticon. I thought it was an interesting choice for a moniker here.Mung
May 19, 2011
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Mung, you were just joking, right?
Yes, lol.Mung
May 19, 2011
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He may have been joking, re your handle, but it didn't quite hit print the way we expected. - UDNews
May 19, 2011
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Mung, you were just joking, right? - UDNews
May 19, 2011
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junk you ask; 'Wouldn’t the prediction have been armor evolving on body first?' One would think, but then again Darwinism has a extremely difficult time with predictions being overturned by evidence: Darwin’s Predictions - Cornelius Hunter http://www.darwinspredictions.com/ Here is a article, and audio interview with Dr. Hunter, summarizing Darwinism's refusal to submit to falsification as all other robust theories of science do: Arsenic-Based Biochemistry: Turning Poison Into Wine - Cornelius Hunter - December 2010 http://darwins-god.blogspot.com/2010/12/arsenic-based-biochemistry-turning.html Failed Predictions of Evolutionists - Cornelius Hunter - audio http://intelligentdesign.podomatic.com/player/web/2009-11-09T15_20_49-08_00 As well Junk you are completely right on the fossil evidence for the hypothesized chimp-human common ancestor being a complete mess. Jonathan wells has a bit of a summation on that point right here: Icon Of Evolution - Ape To Man - The Ultimate Deception - Jonathan Wells - video http://vimeo.com/19080087bornagain77
May 19, 2011
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Why isn't Mung banned for making insulting remarks like the one at number 2?Astroman
May 18, 2011
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i thought so born. It seemed obvious that unicell traces would indicate a more explosive explosion. here's another thing i'm confused about... This 20-legged creature was found to have armor on the legs but not on the body. This is one of the earliest creatures found with armor. Wouldn't the prediction have been armor evolving on body first? http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/70257/title/Ancient_fossil_sheds_light_on_early_evolution_of_body_armor I am new to these discussion if that is not clearly evident. drawn by a mix of confusion and aggravation over the past few years. It seems that nearly every thing they dig out of the ground or scrape off a rock goes against what they think will be in the ground or on the rock. The realization of this for me came first with the har-1 gene. That article was actually emailed to me by accident. Then i started paying more attention to the details of things related to how things got to be things. next, the ardi fossil made no sense to me. The closest fossil to the chimp-human common ancestor looked nothing like a chimp or human? Was bipedal, non-aggressive, monogamous and a vegetarian? huh? The common ancestor was my hippy cousin Ted? I remember the scientist named dr. lovejoy (i think) quoted in the article saying something like...those photos in our textbooks showing that we evolved from knuckle draggers is wrong. throw out those textbooks he said. huh? i was raised on those textbooks lovejoy! then came the hobbit homoflorethesomethingorother. Out of Africa out the window too? then the soup went down. 80 years of the soup. generations of soupers. my grandfather swore by the soup. but now, not enough energy they say. Not the soup! the soup got struck by lightening...it was all in my textbook! That is how it all started! basically most if not all of the major principles i was taught in biology as a lad have been refuted in the past few years. wtf is going on.junkdnaforlife
May 18, 2011
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junk; you may find this of interest: Deepening Darwin's Dilemma - Jonathan Wells - Sept. 2009 Excerpt: "The truth is that (finding) “exceptionally preserved microbes” from the late Precambrian actually deepen Darwin’s dilemma, because they suggest that if there had been ancestors to the Cambrian phyla they would have been preserved." http://www.discovery.org/a/12471 Deepening Darwin's Dilemma - Jonathan Wells - The Cambrian Explosion - video http://www.metacafe.com/watch/4154263 The suddenness of the Cambrian explosion has now been made even more dramatic since the scant 'track' evidence, that evolutionists had claimed were the tracks of worms in the pre-Cambrian strata, has now been brought into severe question: Discovery Of Giant Roaming Deep Sea Protist Provides New Perspective On Animal Evolution: Excerpt: This is the first time a single-celled organism has been shown to make such animal-like traces. The finding is significant, because similar fossil grooves and furrows found from the Precambrian era, as early as 1.8 billion years ago, have always been attributed to early evolving multicellular animals. "If our giant protists were alive 600 million years ago and the track was fossilized, a paleontologist unearthing it today would without a shade of doubt attribute it to a kind of large, multicellular, bilaterally symmetrical animal," says Matz, an assistant professor of integrative biology. "We now have to rethink the fossil record." http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/11/081120130531.htm Even sponge embryos are found in the immediate pre-Cambrian strata: Challenging Fossil of a Little Fish What they had actually proved was that Chinese phosphate is fully capable of preserving whatever animals may have lived there in Precambrian times. Because they found sponges and sponge embryos in abundance, researchers are no longer so confident that Precambrian animals were too soft or too small to be preserved. “I think this is a major mystery in paleontology,” said Chen. “Before the Cambrian, we should see a number of steps: differentiation of cells, differentiation of tissue, of dorsal and ventral, right and left. But we don’t have strong evidence for any of these.” Taiwanese biologist Li was also direct: “No evolution theory can explain these kinds of phenomena.” http://www.fredheeren.com/boston.htm This following quote sums up the implications of these findings: "Without gradualness in these cases, we are back to miracle," Richard Dawkins - River Out Of Eden pg. 83 As well, as is often overlooked, the Ediacaran biota themselves were soft bodied, but well preserved, fossils that add even more evidence testifying to the suddenness of the Cambrian Explosion. Because to state the obvious one more time, "if there were any transitional fossils leading up to the Cambrian Explosion then they certainly should have been found": Macroscopic life in the Palaeoproterozoic - July 2010 Excerpt: The Ediacaran fauna shows that soft-bodied animals were preserved in the Precambrian, even in coarse sandstone beds, suggesting that (the hypothetical transitional) fossils are not found because they were not there. http://www.arn.org/blogs/index.php/literature/2010/07/02/macroscopic_life_in_the_palaeoproterozoi Response to John Wise - October 2010 "So, where then are those ancestors? Fossil preservation conditions were adequate to preserve animals such as jellyfish, corals, and sponges, as well as the Ediacaran fauna. It does not appear that scarcity is a fault of the fossil record." Sean Carroll developmental biologist http://www.evolutionnews.org/2010/10/response_to_john_wise038811.html The 'real work' of the beginning of the Cambrian Explosion may in actuality be as short as a two to three million year time frame (Ross: Creation as Science 2006) which is well within what is termed the 'geologic resolution time'. 'Geologic resolution time' simply means the time frame for the main part of the Cambrian Explosion apparently can't be shortened any further due to limitations of our accurately dating this ancient time period more precisely. "The Cambrian Explosion was so short that it is below the resolution of the fossil record. It could have happened overnight. So we don't know the duration of the Cambrian Explosion. We just know that it was very, very, fast." Jonathan Wells - Darwin's Dilemma Quote It is amazing the level of denial that evolutionists will display when confronted with this evidence for a complete lack of transitional fossils to the Cambrian explosion, yet Dr. Wells points out that, even if we grant the most generous assumptions for time to evolutionists, we still run into insurmountable problems: Storming the Beaches of Norman - Jonathan Wells Excerpt: Even if the Cambrian explosion had lasted 40 million years, as Westrop had claimed, there would not have been enough time for unguided processes to produce the enormous amount of specified complexity in the DNA of the animal phyla. http://www.evolutionnews.org/2009/10/storming_the_beaches_of_norman.html And, despite what many evolutionists believe, recent discoveries are only amplifying this problem for them: More Pow in the Cambrian Explosion - May 2010 Excerpt: Scientists have found more fossil evidence for sudden emergence of animal body plans in the Cambrian strata. http://www.creationsafaris.com/crev201005.htm#20100511a The unscientific hegemony of uniformitarianism - David Tyler - 2011 Excerpt: The summary of results for phyla is as follows. The pattern reinforces earlier research that concluded the Explosion is not an artefact of sampling. Much the same finding applies to the appearance of classes. http://www.arn.org/blogs/index.php/literature/2011/05/16/the_unscientific_hegemony_of_uniformitar Fossil Finds Show Cambrian Explosion Getting More Explosive - May 2010 Excerpt: Cephalopods, which include marine mollusks like squid, octopus, and cuttlefish, are now being reported in the Cambrian explosion fossils.bornagain77
May 18, 2011
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i don't know. maybe. But i found it interesting that trace fossils are being questioned. Unicell trace fossils would seem to create the impression that the Cambrian explosion was more "explosive." rather than a dampening by establishing precamb multicell organisms. Last time it looked at the wiki page on the Camb, in the trace fossil section, there was no mention of the unicell possibility. Because i am fairly certain the purpose of the wiki article is to dampen the camb ex, smudge it if you will, like hawking with the big bang, i was curious as the implications of this study.junkdnaforlife
May 18, 2011
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junkdnaforlife, can we assume that the vast majority of what you write is junk?Mung
May 18, 2011
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Trace fossils often used to take the teeth out of the Cambrian explosion. However, trace fossils may have been subjected to some over enthusiastic interpretation: "The discovery by Matz and his team casts doubt on the argument that Precambrian trace fossils were made by animals." "The discovery also suggests that Precambrian trace fossils weren't necessarily left by what biologists would consider animals and could have instead been made by unicellular organisms." "We now have an actual example of an organism that can [leave such a trace] without being an animal," Stefan Bengtson, head of the paleozoology department at the Swedish Museum of Natural History, told The Scientist." Enter the party line: "Others in the paleontological community took the fossils as evidence of a more slow and steady animal evolution than the Cambrian explosion model would suggest." Re-enter Bengy: "Now, Bengtson says, Matz has found an organism that leaves tracks very much like the Stirling trace fossils, but is not a complex animal. This weakens the argument that the Stirling traces are evidence for animals predating the Cambrian, and instead suggests that simpler organisms could have made the ancient tracks." http://www.the-scientist.com/news/display/55211/junkdnaforlife
May 18, 2011
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