Darwin's Doubt: The Explosive Origin of Animal Life and the Case for Intelligent Design

by Stephen C. Meyer

As we saw in Chapter 3, there is no currently plausible version of the artifact hypothesis. The preservation of numerous soft-bodied Cambrian animals as well as Precambrian embryos and microorganisms undermines the idea of an extensive period of undetected soft-bodied evolution. In addition, the claim that exclusively soft-bodied ancestors preceded the hard-bodied Cambrian forms remains anatomically implausible. A brachiopod cannot survive without its shell. An arthropod cannot exist without its exoskeleton. Any plausible ancestor to such organisms would have likely left some hard body parts, yet none have been found in the Precambrian. Yet the deep-divergence hypothesis, whatever its other merits, requires a viable artifact hypothesis to explain the absence of fossilized Precambrian ancestors.