Pikaia, because of several of its features, was included in the phylum
Chordata, which also includes vertebrates. The first known Cambrian
representative of this phylum, it had a pair of short tentacles on the
front. The trunk consisted of solid blocks of muscle, curved in an
Sshape. The tail expandedin the form of a fin. Pikaia swam just above
the sea bed. It propelled itself by using the muscles to undulate its
body.
The Vertebrates That Evolutionists Never Expected!
Vertebrates are defined as organisms with a spinal column and
spinalcord, a skeleton consisting of bone or cartilage, a brain
protected inside a skull, a closed circulatory system and a heart
consisting of two, three or four chambers. They are divided into five
classes: fish, amphibians,reptiles, birds and mammals. Widely
distributed across the world, their bodies contain a wide variety
ofhighly developed and complex structures.
As the evolutionist paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould admits, Darwinist
textbooks particularly stressed the fact that no evidence of
vertebrates in the Cambrian had ever been found, seeking to portray
this as evidence that Cambrian rocks confirmed the truth of Darwin's
theory of evolution. In their scenarios regarding vertebrate
evolution, evolutionists suggested that Pikaia, a Cambrian chordate,
was the ancestor of all vertebrates.
Yet as they were soon to see, these claims were unjustified.
Excavations performed in Cambrian rock beds inChina produced results
that completely overturned evolutionist scenarios regarding
vertebrates. The chordate now known as Haikouella, unearthed by the
Nanjing Institute of Geology and Paleontology's Jun-Yuan Chen and his
team, possessed a brain, heart and circulatory system, gills, a
notochord, a well developed musculature and—in all likelihood—apair of
eyes.
The science journalist Fred Heeren describes how the discovery of
Haikouella produced results that were the exact opposite of
evolutionist expectations regarding Pikaia:
Biologist had been expecting to see something that would like a
primitive ancestor to the middle Cambrian animal called Pikaia,
formerly promoted as the world's earliest chordate. Rather than
finding evidence that Pikaia had a less-complex ancestor, Chen instead
found a chordate that already displayed many vertebrate
characteristics 15 millionyears earlier. (Fred Heeren, "A little fish
challenges a giant of science," The Boston Globe, 30 May 2000, p. E1.)
Thus it was that evolutionists had to abandon Pikaia, which for
decades they had depicted in textbooks
Pikaia
as the ancestor of vertebrates. The fact thatthe first known
chordatehad a highly developed anatomy and—moreover, that it had lived
15 million years before Pikaia—totally overturned the claimed
progression of the theory of evolution. The elimination of this
fictitious ancestor thus dealt a severe blow to the scenario of
vertebrate evolution.
Yet the real blow came with the discovery that vertebrates had also
lived in the Cambrian! These findings were the remains of a fossilized
fish, dating back 530 million years, found at Haikou, near Kunming,
the regional capital of the Chinese province of Yunnan. These remains
literally stunned evolutionist scientists.
Research by Chinese, British, French and Japanese scientists showed
that this was indeed a vertebrate. All the details of the animal's
head and backbone could be seen in the remains. Such key features as a
lobate extension to the head, eyes and possible nasal sacs provided
detailed information regarding the creature. Many of the vertebrate
features were right before scientists' eyes, and, what is more, in a
fossil dating back 530 million years old.
This fish was given the name of Haikouichthys. Scientists are agreed
that it is a true fish because of its gills and the zigzag arrangement
of the muscles known as myotomes—features unique to fish.
Besides, Haikouichthys isnot the only fossil fish that belongs to
Cambrian. Another fossil,known as Myllokunmingia, was unearthed in
Chengjiang. Philippe Janvier of the National Museum of Natural History
in Paris says that this, too, is definitely a vertebrate and
describesits significance:
It's important because up to now the vertebrates were absent from the
big bang of life, as we call it—that is,the great early
Cambrianexplosion, where all the major animal groups appeared suddenly
in the fossil record. ... It is practically certain that these are
vertebrates . (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/504776.stm)
The theory of evolution maintains that organisms emerged gradually,
and that their complex structures are expected to appear only toward
the end of the fictitious evolutionary process. Given that pointof
view, the chordate Haikouella and the Cambrian fish Haikouichthys and
Myllokunmingia represent major problems, because these animals have
reduced by15 million years the timenecessary for the chordate
evolution scenario and reduced the time necessary for the evolution of
fish by afull 50 million.
Thus, the sudden appearance of these animals has reduced to nothing
the time that these organisms supposedly need to evolve.
Naturally, these discoveries caused great astonishment among
evolutionist circles, who needed to explain the sudden appearance of
vertebrates in the Cambrian Period. This only added another problem to
the Cambrian, which was in any case full of question marks. A great
many evolutionists have finallyhad to abandon their previous scenarios
regarding the evolution of vertebrates and to admit that on this
subject, they have no answers at all.
John Maynard Smith has described this variety:
But in the Burgess Shale,information about soft parts is beautifully
preserved. These fossils have been known for over fifty years, but
recently they have been re-examined. It is now clear that there
existed in the Cambrian a very wide array of forms, some of which may
differ in their basic bodyplan from anything alivetoday. It also seems
likely that, with a few minor exceptions, all thebody plans that exist
today were already present in the Cambrian. (JohnMaynard Smith, The
Evolution, Cambridge University Press, 2000, p. 19.)
Eldredge:
Indeed, the sudden appearance of a varied, well-preserved array of
fossils, which geologists have used to mark the beginnings of the
Cambrian Period does pose a fascinating intellectual challenge. (Duane
T. Gish, Evolution:The Fossils Still Say No!, Institude of Creation
Research, California, 1985, p. 66)
Bob Holmes described the fact of the Cambrian in the 18 October, 1997,
edition of New Scientist magazine:
Glass skyscrapers, Gothic cathedrals, yurts, Georgian terraces, Shinto
shrines, wattle and daub, Victorian railway stations, Bauhaus, igloos,
mock-Tudor. Imagine that all the architectural styles that human
ingenuity could ever devise appeared during one 35-year period,
sometime in the middle of the 15th century. Imagine how today's
historians would be trampling over each other in their eagerness to
learn what made that window of profound creativity possible.
That'sroughly how palaeontologists feel about the Cambrian explosion.
In just 35 million years, the blinking of an eye for evolution, animal
lifeerupted in an explosion of inventiveness that far outshines
anything the planet has seen before or since .(Holmes, "When we were
worms," New Scientist.)
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