[Finally, you're probably not aware of it, but the creationist emphasis on the rapid arisal of *animal* phyla (conveniently for them, at a time in Earth's history when earlier fossils are quite hard to locate) is a sleight-of-hand attempt to distract attention from *plant* evolution,] Actually the term 'phyla' only refers to animals.
AAAAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!! Man, that's a good one. That ranks right up there with your other many "scientific blunders that even a junior-high-school student would be too educated to make".
So "the term 'phyla' only refers to animals, eh? That'll come as a huge surprise to the botanists who have been using the term for plant taxa for over a couple hundred years now... While it's true that Linnaeus, the father of taxonomy, preferred to use the term "Division" for plants and "Phylum" for animals (for the same level of classification), the inconsistent choice was a contentious one from the start, and many generations of biologists have chosen to use "phylum" for plants as well as animals. Which term was "preferred" has been a long-standing point of argument among botanists, until it was finally settled by the 1993 International Code of Botanical Nomenclature conference of standards, which authoritatively declared that *both* are perfectly acceptable (and exactly interchangeable) when applied to plants.
So no, saying "phyla" does *not* automatically mean that one is talking about animals, nor has it ever, except for a short time in the 1800's (and even then only until biologists began refining Linnaeus's original suggestions).
Where have you been the past 200 years?
Here, check this out and learn something: Survey of the botanical Phyla
My speaking of 'animal' phyla is merely for the benefit of the non-technical reader that may not be aware that I am only speaking of animals not plants.
Keep telling yourself that, and you might start to believe it yourself. The rest of us aren't so gullible, though.
I also use it because ignorant (and dishonest) evolutionists, ever trying to create confusion tend to bring out plants as a contradiction of the uniqueness of what happened in the Cambrian.
Because they are.
Creationists want to try to give the impression that there was some kind of non-evolutionary act of "creation" during the Cambrian. Even for animals such an implication falls apart when you look at the evidence, but it's obviously even more of a fraud when one looks at the rise of complex plants, which happened in more recent times. This means that the Cambrian was hardly a "let there be..." time for all life, and also allows the gradual evolution of plant life to be better represented in the fossil record (since it happend during eras for which we have more numerous and complete fossil collections), which puts the lie to the creationist implication that the origins of all kinds of life are shrouded in unobservable (and therefore mysterious) clouds of the unknown. Quite simply, there is no "Cambrian explosion" for plants. Their evolution is clear. That's why creationists would prefer to draw attention away from plant evolution and to the currently lesser-documented early animal evolution.
Further, your statement that plant evolution continued according to Darwinian postulates is false. The only major classification of new plants in hundreds of millions of years is flowering plants which arose some 135 million years ago.
Umm... Only if you decide to totally ignore the rise of such "major" changes as the first land-based plants 475 million years ago ("MYA"), reproduction via seeds 375 MYA, vascular plants 360 MYA (i.e. plants with a system for transporting nutrients and water up/down the plant), specialized leaves 340 MYA, woody secondary growth 320 MYA (which made possible strong, tall plants such as trees and others -- prior to this all plants were thin, ropy organisms which grew only from their branch tips and could not become wider and stronger at the base as they aged), etc...
Flowering plants are a problem for evolution also since they require a symbiotic relationship with animals which is difficult to justify in evolutionary terms.
Are you daft? The evolution of symbiotic relationships is well understood. Each "party" benefits, so each species has an evolutionary advantage (and thus selective pressure) for further developing the relationship. Voila, co-evolution results. Simple.
I would give a link to the following, but the main page is offline, so I have no choice but to cut-and-paste Google's cached copy:
COEVOLUTION OF THE ANGIOSPERMS AND THEIR INSECT POLLINATORS
Plants, unlike animals, are in general immobile. Thus, the uniting of egg and sperms from separate individuals for reproduction presents them with difficulties not faced by mobile creatures. Impelled by the urge to mate, mate and female animals can swim, crawl, walk or fly until they find a suitable partner. But plants, anchored by their roots to separate spots of ground, need the intervention of a third party. The pollen of one plant must be carried to the ovules of another by an external agent such as wind, mammals, birds or insects.
It is inevitable that wind will pick up and carry pollen if it is in its path and early plants, like modern gymnosperms, relied on wind pollination. They evolved female reproductive structures with sticky sap-covered ovules in order to catch the wind-carried pollen and they also evolved separate male structures adapted to producing and dispersing copious amounts of pollen. But wind as a pollinator is uncontrollable and unreliable and any adaptation that increases the chances of pollen being carried to another member of the same species would be favored. Thus, the door to insect pollination and the evolution of flowers was open.
The fossil record indicates that flowers originated during the middle Mesozoic Era approximately 150 million years ago. It is likely that beetles that fed on plant tissue during that time discovered the sap-covered ovules and pollen to be nutritious foods. Some beetles returning regularly to the new food sources accidentally carried pollen to the ovules. This new method of pollination represented a more efficient method of cross pollination than releasing huge quantities of pollen into the air. Through natural selection, plants developed adaptations to allow more successful beetle pollination such as carpels to protect the ovaries from the beetles' chewing jaws. Also, the male pollen-producing stamens and the female ovary-containing carpels moved closer together to increase the chances that the beetle would carry pollen between the two. In some flowers, the stamens and carpels are grouped within the same flower.
The more attractive the plants' flowers were to the insect, the more often they would be visited and the more seeds they could produce. Any variations that attracted insects were selected for by natural selection. Nectaries that secrete sweet nectar as a food reward evolved. Also, some of the outer stamens became sterile and brightly-colored, becoming petals to visually attract the pollinators and give them a place to land.
By the beginning of the Cenozoic era, approximately 65 million years ago, the symbiotic relationship between flowering plants and insect pollinators had become entrenched. Groups of insects such as bees, butterflies and moths had evolved and were dependent on flowers as their main or only food sources. From this time on, flowering plants and their insect pollinators have had a profound effect on each other.
Much of the beauty and variety of floral color, odor and anatomy is due to the adaptations of plants to their specialized pollinators. Plants that are visited by one or a very few kinds of pollinators have an advantage over plants visited by many different kinds of pollinators, since a more specialized pollinator is less likely to deposit its pollen on the flower of another species. It is also advantageous for the pollinator to specialize on a particular flower type and have an exclusive food supply that is inaccessible to a competing species.
Many of the distinctive features of modern flowers are special adaptations that encourage a particular pollinator and restrict others. The yellow color, sweet smell and stable landing platform offered by the petals of the prickly saxifrage flower in Figure 1 allow the bumble bee to recognize it and land. Bees are a good pollinator for this flower, since they have a visual spectrum restricted to yellows and blues, they are attracted to sweet smells and they tend to feed on only one flower type at a time. In Figure 2, you see an aster flower which is adapted to butterfly pollination,. The narrow and deep nectaries of these flowers restrict insects that lack a long narrow tongue like that of the butterfly. In many cases, the depth of a flower's nectaries closely matches the tongue length of the butterfly or moth that pollinated it.
The last two figures show that co-evolution toward mutually beneficial symbiosis with insects is by no means the only way that plants ensure their pollination. Figure 3 shows you a flower with a downward-hanging nectary, adapted for pollination by a hovering hummingbird like the Calliope hummingbird shown. Figure 4 shows you that mutualism - with benefits to both partners - is not the only way plants can get insects to carry their pollen. In this example, the male wasp is being duped into thinking that the orchid flower is a female of the same species. Through mimicry, the orchid is pollinated as the wasp travels from flower to flower seeking a mate.
Now, which part of that was so hard to figure out on your own?
