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

by Stephen C. Meyer

Even the most favorable interpretations of these trace fossils suggest that they indicate the presence of no more than two animal body plans (of largely unknown characteristics). Thus, the Ediacaran record falls far short of establishing the existence of the wide variety of transitional intermediates that a Darwinian view of life’s history requires. The Cambrian explosion attests to the first appearance of organisms representing at least twenty phyla and many more subphyla and classes, each manifesting distinctive body plans. In a best case, the Ediacaran forms represent possible ancestors for, at most, four distinct Cambrian body plans, even counting those documented only by trace fossils. This leaves the vast majority of the Cambrian phyla with no apparent ancestors in the Precambrian rocks (i.e., at least nineteen of the twenty-three phyla present in the Cambrian have no representative in Precambrian strata).33