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Abundant Life1
The diversity of life in the biosphere
O wonder! How many goodly
creatures are there heere?
---William Shakespeare
The Tempest, Act V Scene 1
1
Illustration from http://www-white.media.mit.edu/~shers/animals85.gif
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Outline
Introduction
The “nonsense” question:
What are the limits to natural variation?
The Cambrian Explosion of animal body plans
The Creation of Land Plants
The Creation of Land Animals
Return to the Nonsense Question
What is Kind? Limits of natural variation
Example: Radiolarians
Example: Trilobites
Denton’s Abundant Life Hypothesis
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Cambrian Explosion
Start is defined by appearance of burrows2
that are clearly caused by animals.
- Currently about 590 My ago.
Trichophycus fossil burrows
that define the start of the Cambrian age3
The fossil burrows are known as Trichophycus pedum. In 1991 the
International Subcommission on Cambrian Stratigraphy officially set
the Cambrian boundary at the first appearance of these fossils. See
http://www.uni-wuerzburg.de/palaeontologie/Stuff/casu8.htm.
2
3
from http://www.emory.edu/COLLEGE/ENVS/research/ichnology/
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Earliest Animal Fossils
early Cambrian -- 570 My
Trilobite Bergeroniellus spinosus
Lena River Gorge, Siberia
(Note dime to indicate size)4
Graphics/Trichophycus.jpg: “a horizontally to obliquely oriented
burrow presumed to be produced by a large arthropod”
4 From http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/arthropoda/
trilobita/bergeroniellus.jpg. Lena River Gorge, Siberia, Early Cambrian.
See http://www.ucmp.berkeley.ed/cambrian/aldan.html.
Photo by Jere H. Lipps.
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“Fossils of trilobites appeared suddenly in
the geological record …. If you are tempted
by the word “dramatic” then this is the
occasion where you could be forgiven for
weakening. When you visit a rock section
spanning the right bit of the early
Cambrian—and there are such profiles in
Newfoundland, Mongolia and Siberia—there
will be not a sniff of a trilobite as you work
your way upwards from one bed to its
successor…Then, quite suddenly, a whole
Profallotaspis or an Olenellus as big as a crab
will pop out into your waiting hands as you
split the rock. These are trilobites with lots of
segments and big eyes: striking things, not
little squitty objects.…You are tempted to cry
out: ‘bang!’ And as you continue to collect a
foot or so higher into younger strata, the first
trilobite will be joined by others, maybe half
a dozen or so different species, and all
individually distinctive ones at that.”
Richard Fortey, Trilobite!5
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Richard Fortey, Trilobite! Eyewitness to Evolution, Alfred A. Knopf,
2000, p.121.
5
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Cambrian:
First Appearance of Animals
What distinguishes
Plants (Kingdom Plantae) and
Animals (Kingdom Animalia)?
Both Plants and Animals:6
• Many cells
• Reproduce sexually with sperm & egg
• Develop from embryo
(They differ in HOW they form the sperm and egg)
Only Animals: A Genetic Body Plan7
homeobox genes = turn on/off gene production
homeotic genes = distinguish regions of cell/body
left/right,
front/back (dorsal/ventral)
top/bottom (anterior/posterior)
hox genes = both homeobox and homeotic.
=> Animals have hox genes.
Animals cannot produce all their own
food from simple chemicals.
Lynn Margulis, Five Kingdoms, 3rd. Ed. W.H.Freeman & Co. 1998, Chapter 3 & 5
introduction.
7 Colin Tudge, The Variety of Life, Oxford, 2000, p183.
6
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(Most plants can, except for nitrogen)
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Common Animal Phyla Originating in Cambrian Explosion8
designation
Name
Name Meaning
Examples
A-2
Porifera
porous, spongy
sponges
A-3
Cnidaria
nettle (stinging)
corals, hydras,
medusas
A-13
Rotifera
wheel (beating cilia
“wheel
appear rotating)
animacules”
A-19
Chelicerata
claw (Arachnida =
scorpions
class Arachnida goddess Arachne)
spiders
A-20
Mandibulata
chewing jaw
termites, insects
A-21
Crustacea
shelly, crusty
lobsters, crabs
A-22
Annelida
ring (segments)
earthworms
A-26
Mollusca
soft body
clams, octopus
A-30
Brachiopoda
“arm leg” tentacles
lampshells
A-34
Echinodermata
sea urchin skin
starfish
A-37
Craniata
brain
fish, amphibians,
(all modern
reptiles, birds,
species are
mammals
vertebrates)
Note: A-19 to A-21 are the Arthropods = “joint-footed”
8 Following the nomenclature of Lynn Margulis et al, Five Kingdoms, 3rd Ed. W.H.
Freeman, 1999. This nomenclature includes all vertebrates as Craniata; some extinct
vertebrate species did not have Crania.
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The Burgess Shale Fossils in the Mid-Cambrian (about 545 My)9
Redrawn from Simon Conway Morris & H.B. Whittington, "The
Animals of the Burgess Shale" Scientific American, 1979. Also in
Rich&Fenton The Fossil Book, p 115.
9
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Scanning Electron Micrograph
of an Early Cambrian bivalve Crustacean fossil10
10
http://www.uni-wuerzburg.de/palaeontologie/cscpic/phosg.jpg SEM
micrograph of a hesslandonid phosphatocopine. Oblique view. D.
Walossek, Ulm. From the web page “Life in the Cambrian” at
http://www.uni-wuerzburg.de/palaeontologie/Stuff/casu8.htm.
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Moving to Land
Plants
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Problems Solved by Plants
• How to propagate and survive in extreme conditions.
Solutions: Spores, pollen, seeds.
• How to avoid drying out in the atmosphere?
Solutions:
Cutin (waxy layer on leaves),
Stomata (openings in leaves)
• How to get water and nutrients to plant extremities?
Solutions: roots and vascular system
Note: solution implies a complex control of
solutes and a mechanism for water transport.
• How to support weight in air, maintain rigid form
Solution: root system to anchor in ground;
cellulose for low plants (osmotic pressure);
woody tissue for taller plants.
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Moving to Land
Animals
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The Question of “kind”
- How much variation can occur
naturally?
Two examples with long fossil records:
• radiolarians
• trilobites
Working Hypothesis: Variation within
a kind is mainly the result of random
changes within a stable genetic pool.
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Radiolarians
• single-celled marine animal with hard (calcium or
silicon) skeleton surrounding the nucleus and
reproductive apparatus of the cell.
• food-gathering with gelatinous pseudopods that
project through skeleton.
• free-floating (planktonic) distributed worldwide.
• fossils found from Cambrian to Present.
QuickTime™ and a
Photo - JPEG decompressor
are needed to see this picture.
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A typical radiolarian11
11
http://www.pbrc.hawaii.edu/bemf/microangela/mradiolo.jpg. One of
a series of paintings by MicroAngela.
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“The skeleton of the Radiolaria is
developed in such exceedingly manifold
and various shapes, and exhibits at the
same time such wonderful regularity and
delicacy in its adjustments, that in both
these respects the present group of Protista
excels all other classes of the organic
world. For, in spite of the fact that the
Radiolarian organism always remains
merely a single cell, it shows the
potentiality of the highest complexity to
which the process of skeleton formation
can be brought by a single cell. All that has
been brought to pass in this direction by
single tissue-cells of animals and plants
does not attain the extremely high stage of
development of the Radiolaria.”
Ernst Haeckel, Challenger Report on Radiolaria (1887)12
12
Ernst Haeckel, Zoology, Vol XVIII Report on the Radiolaria collected
by H.M.S. Challenger, 1887, in Report on the Scientific results of the
Voyage of H.M.S. Challenger during the years 1873-1876.
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Snow Crystals
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Snowflakes13
Fractal Plant Shapes
These images taken from Michael Barnsley, Fractals Everywhere, Academic Press,
1988.
13
from http://www.lowtem.hokudai.ac.jp/~frkw/english/
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Fractal Arctic Scene14
14 http://www.cognitivedistortion.net/G2/landscapes/LS6/Arctic_Sea/Arctic_Sea.jpg
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Trilobites
First appearance about 570 My ago.
Middle Cambrian Trilobite (540 My)15
• Compound eyes
• Articulated and segmented exoskeleton
• Jointed legs with gills
• Segmented antennae
15
Paradoxides gracilis Jinetz, Bohemia. approx. 4.5" long. Plate I, Levi-Setti Trilobites
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Trilobite Internal Body Parts
Trilobite body parts16
• Alimentary canal
- mouth, stomach, anus
• Respiratory system with gills
• Circulatory system with heart
• Muscle system
• Simple nerve network
- brain, nerve cord, and ganglia
• Sensory system
- antennas, compound eyes,
touch, sensory pits (smell)
16
From http://www.aloha.net/~smgon/trilointernal.htm, Trilobite Internal Anatomy.
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How do we know this Internal detail?
- Pyratized (= fools gold) fossils with soft body
details that show up in xrays.
“Some trilobites discovered near Rome, New York
have had the hard and soft-body parts replaced by
finely crystaline pyrite (FeS2). They display finely
detailed external appendages and gills. X-rays reveal
fine details of muscular, digestive, circulatory, visual
systems. As a result of this providential gift, much is
known about trilobite anatomy despite the fact that
they have been extinct for 250 million years.”
Rolf Ludvigsen, Fossils of Ontario17
Rolf Ludvigsen, Fossils of Ontario Part 1: the Trilobites, Royal Ontario Museum,
1979, p22.
17
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Trilobites from Cambrian to Permian
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The Trilobite eyes
Kinds of Trilobite eyes:
• Holochroal -- packed cones of silica crystal prisms
Holochroal eye
• Schizochroal - round compound silica lenses
Schizochroal eye
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Devonian Phacops with Schizochroal eyes 18
Descartes’ lens (left) and trilobite Crozonaspis (right)
Huygens’ lens (left) and trilobite Dalmanitina (right)
18
Plate 201 Levi-Setti photo by
megalomanicus (Struve), Alnif Morocco
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How was the Schizochroal eye created?
Possibility 1: Direct Creation
Possibility 2: Natural Development
- I am inclined to favor Possibility 2.
- Mechanism: Paedomorphosis
= Retention of juvenile features in the adult.
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Abundant Life
Georges Cuvier (early 1800’s)
“doctrine of Plentitude”
Michael Denton Nature’s Destiny, Chapter 13
“The Principle of Plentitude”
Example: Eyes.
“It appears that every possibility has been
realised in the design of image-forming optical
devices.”
• Amorphous (hard, soft) and crystalline lenses
• Simple and compound eyes (multiple lenses)
• Focusing and non-focusing
• Reflective and refractive lenses
• Simple and compound lenses
with multiple refractive indices
• Image formation by focussing and by scanning
• A myriad of non-image forming light sensors
• Sensitivity to various parts of the light spectrum
• Passive and active (light generating) eyes
--- This principle carries through in all of biology.
“A comprehensive array of solutions”
--- Not just restricted to “higher” plants and animals
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Example: Cnidaria stingers.
Conclusions
• Creation of Plants and Animals is a story of
Gradual buildup of the ecosystem and
Orderly introduction of new species as soon
as the environment is ready.
Examples:
- Gradual migration to dry land
e.g. Fish -> Amphibians -> Reptiles
unprotected -> protected embryos
e.g. small plants -> large plants
vascula, roots, woody plants
waxy leaves, coated seeds
- Microbe feeders before predators
- Plants before (or with) plant eaters
==> It doesn’t “prove” natural evolution.
• Complex species appear Suddenly in the fossil record
without the precursors or orderly development that
evolution requires.
Examples:
- Animal Body Plans in general
- Trilobites & Crustaceans in particular
• There is evidence for Anticipation of future need in
the appearance of new body plans.
Examples:
- Trilobite & Crustacean armor
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- Trilobite compound lens eye.
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Conclusions (Continued)
• With an adequate gene pool, natural change can
produce a wide range of body shapes and features.
Examples:
- Radiolarian skeletons
- Trilobite eyes (many varieties)
• Abundant Life:
- The created world uses “every” way to solve the
problems of life.
• A stable ecosystem requires Complete Recycling
- When absent, the system loses balance
Examples:
- Carboniferous age (must recycle carbon)
- Age of dinosaurs (??)
• The “Nonsense Question” needs answering.
“What are the limits of natural development?”
- There is lots of work to do to answer this.
- The answer can be found in:
- God’s fossil record of his creative activity
+ A deep understanding of genetics and
embryonic development.
** I believe that God Intends us to find the
answers, and it is for us to do the hard work.
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