Yeah, if I want the final word on lens technology, I ask a palaeontologist.
Got an actual checkable citation for that quote, BTW?
Heh! Funny.
Agreed, paleo's aren't usually experts on lens technology and should probably stick to providing the props for the evolutionist's just-so stories. Eldredge, on the other hand, apparantly devoted a portion of his doctoral dissertation to the trilobite’s eye.
I got the quote from here (the link I provided earlier):
Niles Eldredge, paleontologist of the American Museum of Natural History (and a scientist who devoted a portion of his doctoral dissertation to the trilobite’s eye), remarked:
These lenses—technically termed aspherical, aplanatic lenses—optimize both light collecting and image formation better than any lens ever conceived. We can be justifiably amazed that these trilobites, very early in the history of life on Earth, hit upon the best possible lens design that optical physics has ever been able to formulate (as quoted in Ellis, 2001, p. 49, emp. added).