"Charles Darwin worried about a possible hole in his theory of evolution, but some American scientists may just have plugged it. For about a billion years after the dawn of life on Earth, organisms didn't evolve all that much.Then about 600 million years ago came the "Cambrian explosion." Everything changed relatively quickly, with all kinds of plants and animals emerging—which doesn't quite seem to fit with Darwin's theory of slow change, hence "Darwin's dilemma." Now, within a few days of each other, two new studies have appeared that could explain the shift, ABC News reports.
[Did these studies appear suddenly, or slowly?]
One, by scientists at Yale and the Georgia Institute of Technology, suggests that oxygen levels may have been far less plentiful in the atmosphere prior to the Cambrian explosion than experts had thought.
[Why did it happen? Darwin is still "worried", but they're working on it.]
The air may only have been .1% oxygen, which couldn't sustain today's complex organisms, indicating a shift had to happen before the "explosion" could take place.
[Shift Happens!]
In a separate study, a University of Texas professor explains where that oxygen burst may have come from: a major tectonic shift. Based on geological evidence [very old duct tape], Ian Dalziel believes what is now North America remained attached [co-dependent] to the supercontinent Gondwanaland until the early Cambrian period, in contrast with current belief, which has the separation occurring earlier.
Far from claiming their findings as "settled science", the article clearly tells us we are dealing here with unconfirmed hypotheses.
Yes, in time these ideas may be confirmed by other scientists doing other work, or they may be disputed and even proved false.
Time will tell, in the mean time the findings and speculation are interesting, imho.
Wow what ‘faith’ in chance+a whole lot of time.
No matter how many holes are plugged with suppositions, the original or genesis of something from nothing remains unanswered from the lofty towers of Dawkins’s flat.
Yet recently we hear, “no problem” the universe always existed! Problem solved!