[SunkenCiv]

Even if no earlier fossils are to be found, "we can assume they existed." [smirk]

[SunkenCiv]

Uh-oh. How do I address the first message of a thread to the list? Musta missed somethin'.

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[ValerieUSA]

I assume he consumes mass quantities of alcohol whilst contemplating his ever-softening ancient fossils.

[FairOpinion]

"He says these fossils provide evidence that there was a long "fuse" of evolutionary development, lasting about 350 million years, before the final explosion. "

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[FairOpinion]

"Mark Williams from the British Geological Survey in Nottingham, one of the finders of the fossils, hopes to prove that the Cambrian evolutionary explosion of animals was not so explosive after all. The existence of such an advanced crustacean so early in Earth history upsets this theory. Richard Fortey from the Natural History Museum at Oxford University agrees. He says these fossils provide evidence that there was a long "fuse" of evolutionary development, lasting about 350 million years, before the final explosion. "

PING -- I thought you may be interested in this for your evolution ping list.

[Ichneumon]

DNA analysis has long strongly suggested that the life forms of the early Cambrian had at least 100 million years of pre-Cambrian evolutionary divergence, so indeed the Cambrian "explosion" appears to be an illusory one.

As Darwin himself pointed out in 1859, due to several factors (including migrations and expansions, and the fact that fossil finds are often limited to small geographic areas which by luck were more suitable for fossilization than others, or better situated for us to be able to reach them), species could often seem to "suddenly" appear in a local fossil record, even if (or especially if) they had slowly evolved elsewhere and then subsequently radiated into new lands.

This is even more likely to have occurred during the early Cambrian, since it was a time during which a supercontinent was breaking up. I have long suspected that the "sudden" appearance of the Cambrian forms might actually be due to a long evolution and divergence of life in some landlocked sea, from which we have not yet found fossils (it could still be sub-sea today, making fossil recovery unlikely), which then "broke open" when the continents separated and spilled its "advanced" life forms out into the oceans, where the fossil record shows they "suddenly" supplanted the more primitive life forms which preceded them in the oceans.