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2. DARWIN'S TREE OF LIFE. Why don't textbooks discuss the "Cambrian explosion," in which all major animal groups appear together in the fossil record fully formed instead of branching from a common ancestor -- thus contradicting the evolutionary tree of life?

If Wells so mischaracterized the state of the fossil evidence, he's a bigger charlatan and humbug than I thought. This statement is right out of the old creationist pamphlets and it is dead wrong.

It would only be true if the Cambrian were the start of all life on earth. It once appeared that way but that was proven wrong a long time ago. Many phyla are in evidence before the Cambrian, and there is ample indirect evidence (tracks, burrows, etc.) of others.

It would only be true if we couldn't see the origins of phyla. We can.

It would be true if no phyla originate after the Cambrian. This too is false.

If one considers the Vendian/Cambrian animals as constituting the Cambrian Explosion, then we have 13 phyla appearing in the Cambrian Explosion and 20 AFTER the Cambrian Explosion. While one can assume that the 13 phyla which have no fossil record arose in the Cambrian, assumptions are NOT data. The plain fact is that the Cambrian Explosion doesn't even represent the majority of the phyla. Will these other phyla be found in the Cambrian? Maybe. But one can't rationally assume what the future holds in order to argue to his case.

Phylum Level Evolution by Glenn R. Morton.

Wells, a senior fellow at the infamous Discovery (of Nothing) Institute, recently made a totall ass of himself trying to spin-doctor the announcement of of a study with evolutionary implications. Like one tallhappy, he apparently jumped in without reading to see what he was talking about, in this case, the study itself. I'll see if I can't find the thread for you.

You are misrepresenting the Cambrian explosion. Wells did not say there was no life before the Cambrian, nobody says that. What happened in the Cambrian is that before it there were less than a half dozen phyla, in the Cambrian some three dozen new phyla appeared - with no ancestors at all. Now that is way too much for evolution to pass off as "we lost the fossils" or "the fossils will be found". Also let me note that evolutionists have always relied on fossils as proof of evolution. The Cambrian if nothing else shows that evolution cannot be proven from the fossil record.