To The Paleozoic Era ![]() |
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478 The Bible According to Einstein
The Cambrian
And let the waters bring forth abundantly
And the continents of proto-Siberia, Laurentia, Baltica and Kazakhstania continued drifting north. And it came to pass that Laurentia and proto-Siberia were positioned at the equator. And Kazakhstania was southeast of proto-Siberia, while Baltica was in the middle of the Iapetus Ocean south of the Tropic of Capricorn. And Laurentia was on its side, for western proto-North-America was north of eastern proto-North-America. And proto-Greenland was east of proto-North-America. |
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The Old Testament 479
as if someone were blowing it. And in one place, where dust did settle, was a peculiar pattern made It looked like unto a candelabra with eleven arms. And each arm seemed to hold a candle.
Now evolution was proceeding at a rapid pace. The fire on the fuse was burning. The fuse itself was almost gone. And everything was perfect for a biological explosion, an evolutionary radiation:185 The geology was right; the chemistry was right; the climate was right; the atmosphere was right; the biology was right; and the recent evolutionary past was right, for sea level had risen and the continents had separated, providing new shallow-water habitats; for circulating ocean currents were full of nutrients; for the seas and air had warmed; for the atmosphere had oxygen; for eukaryotic cells had previously appeared and the sexual revolution in evolution had occurred. And it was like unto mixing And in five-hundred-and-seventy-million BC the evolutionary "big bang" went off! There was a sudden burst in evolution, And the diversity of animals on Earth exploded. There were annelids, arthropods, brachiopods, onychophores, ctenophores, cnidarians, echinoderms, chordates, mollusks, graptolites and sponges.186
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185This use of the word "radiation" indicates the outset of a great diversity of new life forms. |
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480 The Bible According to Einstein
Now arthropods187 were animals with hard and jointed exoskeletons whose bodies were in segments and who had matching pairs of jointed arms, appendages, antennae, legs or wings. And one day, they would be the first creatures on Earth to walk on land. Now at this time, on short stubby legs, or pods, they crawled on seabed floors, often leaving trails behind them. And so it came to pass that the tracks of arthropods were everywhere upon the ocean floor. Now eventually these ancient creatures would evolve to crustaceans such as barnacles, lobsters, crayfish, crabs and shrimp and to insects such as grasshoppers, crickets, aphids, ants, lice, earwigs, butterflies, bugs, beetles, dragonflies, wasps, fleas, flies, termites, moths and bees, and to other creatures such as scorpions, ticks, spiders, mites and centipedes.
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187 Arthropod means "jointed feet." |
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The Old Testament 481
Now not all the cnidarians were newcomers to the Cambrian some had existed in the Late Proterozoic Eon. They were jellyfish, proto-sea-anemones, primitive coral, hydra, sea pens, sea fans, and so on. And they had two-layered epidermis, or "skin," and were carnivores, feeding mostly on sea plankton. Now the bell-shaped jellyfish and hydra floated with their tentacles dangling down. And the proto-sea-anemones were cylindrically shaped and sessile, rooted in the muddy ocean floor. And their mouths and brightly colored tentacles were directed upward. Each looked more like a flower than a fauna. And cnidarians were often radially symmetric, like a disk.189 And sea pens seemed like unto feathers, growing in the ocean floor. And the sea fan was more irregular instead of a single stalk, it had several stems that formed a branch-like structure, giving it the appearance of a spider web. Deep swimming proto-chordates
Now during the rest of geo-history, proto-chordates would undergo extensive evolution, eventually becoming chordates. The first chordates would be proto-fish. Now some fish would grow limbs, evolving into tetrapods, who would, in turn, branch out into amphibians and amniotes, the vertebrates that lay land eggs. And amniotes would develop into warm-blooded animals, the mammals, and into reptiles. And some reptiles would grow wings and fly as birds, while others would remain on land or go back to the sea. Thus chordates would include amphibians, fishes, reptiles, birds and mammals. Thus man would be a chordate.
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189 In other words, when turned about their centers they looked the same. This phylum of animals is called radiata. |
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482 The Bible According to Einstein
Now the mollusks were of three main types: proto-cephalopods, gastropods and bivalves. The primitive scallops and oysters would later "join" the bivalves, the invertebrates with two-hinged shells, such as clams and mussels. And at this time, the gastropods192 were underwater proto-slugs and proto-snails, while proto-cephalopods were proto-octopuses, proto-squids and proto-nautiloids.
And a spiny creature several centimeters long inched its way across the ocean floor. And it was covered entirely with countless tiny leaf-shape plates, which made it look pineapple-like. And on its back stood two rows of spines, like two arrays of swords to threaten those above. And in the front and on its underside, two arc-shaped bars containing teeth were clawing at the seabed for algae and for bits of food. And the creature was wiwaxia, the "porcupine" of ancient annelids,196 the "tiny stegosaurus" of the Cambrian seas. And a slow current flowed between its spines like unto a weak but steady wind. Now nearby, sluggishly crawling forward like unto a snail another wiwaxia had a tiny brachiopod clamped onto its last and eighteenth spine. And still another smaller wiwaxia had spines one-third the size of its two bigger brethren. And still a smaller one had none.
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192 Gastropod means "belly-footed." |
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The Old Testament 483
And a daisy-like dinomischus undulated with the movement of the ocean waves above, its thin stem tethered to the ocean floor. And upon the stem, some twenty upright grass-like blades protruded from a bulb. And hidden by the blades and on the bulb were two small openings, one through which dinomischus took in bio-matter and one through which it discharged wastes.197
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197 Although dinomischus seemed like a plant, it was not. It was a stalked animal. |
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484 The Bible According to Einstein And an aysheaia, an onychophore which looked like unto an underwater caterpillar, was crawling on the ocean floor on twenty tiny cone-shaped pods, on which many even smaller spikes stuck out. And two antennae on its head were moving left and right, feeling things to help it find its way. And elsewhere, aysheaias were crawling and were feeding on a sponge. They were as unto bridges
And hyolithes lived in cone-shaped shells. And as these tiny mollusks grew, they grew their shells by adding to the open end.
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199 Most echinoderms, such as the starfish, have five-fold symmetry, meaning that they look the same when rotated by seventy-two degrees. |
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The Old Testament 485
And a creature crawled along the ocean floor on several dozen legs. And then it paused; when motionless, its encrusted legs looked like unto a cage of ribs. Now the creature had three lobes like unto a butterfly a worm-like central core202 along with two flat, shield-like sides. And it was moving now its head203 from side to side. And it began to crawl again. And on grainy underwater sand, it felt about to find its way. And it was called a trilobite, named as such because it had three lobes. Now it happened that the seas were full of trilobites. And there were a myriad of different types countless shapes for lobes and legs and shield-like sides.
And the hand of Nature touched an ostracod, an ancient version of the modern mussel shrimp. And the ostracod evolved in the middle of its head a single eye the creature was as cyclops. And many trilobites and other metazoa did acquire eyes. Thus life saw light and objects that were lit; the sense of sight had come about.205
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201 The trilobite was the most famous and common Cambrian arthropod, becoming the symbol of Cambrian life. |
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486 The Bible According to Einstein Now the shrimp-shaped opabinia was encased in overlapping armored plates that fanned out on both sides. And a long tube that extended from its head was slowly moving. And at the tube's end, a pair of tiny claws did open up and clamp down on a bit of floating biomass. Then the tube twisted back, bent down and curled around.206 And the biomass was place inside a hole beneath its head. And the biomass passed through a U-shaped channel which led to opabinia's cylindrically shaped gut, a gut that started at its neck and ran down the length of its entire body to the tail, where two side fins stuck out. Now opabinia had five raised and knob-like eyes. And why did it have five?
And though the seas were full of living creatures, barren were the lands. And on the plains were only desert, wind and dust. On land was no discernible movement of a living form at all. Nor was there any plant or tree. And without trees and vegetation, Earth fell victim to erosive forces, when wind and rain eroded continental lands. And as dirt, pebbles and particles were transported in Earth's streams and rivers to the continental shelves, the shelves did grow in size. And so there was a general movement of material from inland highlands to the off-shore margins. And as the continents declined in height, wider did they grow. And this continental widening would continue during the rest of the Cambrian, then through the Ordovician and Silurian.
And as it swam just above the ocean floor, an anomalocaris flapped two side fins of pleated cloth-like folds. Now for Cambrian times, its body was enormous half a meter long. And the body was shaped like unto a submarine except it narrowed in the rear. And beady, disk-shaped eyes on each side of its head searched the ocean for any sign of movement. And the anomalocaris spied a tiny crawling trilobite, maneuvered to it and then hovered over it. And underneath anomalocaris's head, two claws, consisting of segmented tubes with jagged spikes, curled opened and unfolded down and did embrace the smaller trilobite. Spines then impaled the prey. The two claws contracted, curled and lifted up the squirming trilobite. And on anomalocaris's underside, a mouth, shaped like a slice of pineapple and lined with teeth, did open up. And the ring of jaws collapsed upon the trilobite. The prey was so consumed.
____________________ 206 The motion was similar to the that of the trunk of a modern elephant when it feeds itself with grass. |
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The Old Testament 487
And elsewhere trilobites fell victim to large predators. And it came to pass that some grew pointed spines. And a few trilobites, when bitten, were able to survive and partially repair the wounds.
And sea flora also flourished, although not as spectacularly as fauna. Now many Cambrian photosynthetic organisms, including bacteria and many algae, were still a single cell. But the diversity of algal species doubled at this time. And one strain of cyanobacteria, or blue-green algae, thrived in sediments of off-shore limestone platforms, building large laminated mounds of many shapes. And one green algal species, margaretia dorus, was a goliath although a centimeter wide, it grew to be a meter long. And phytoplankton such as those producing acritarchs diversified and thrived.
____________________ 207 Many Cambrian creatures in remarkable detail would be preserved unto this day in the Burgess Shale of British Columbia. |
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488 The Bible According to Einstein And the pace of algal evolution sped up as the battle field for life became complex and fierce. And the expected lifetime of an algal species shrank to just ten-million years.208 And the number of types of plankton skyrocketed as well, for they flourished in the warm waters of the tropics. And the variety of plants in Panthalassa and in Iapetus grew exponentially.209 And since these marine plants converted carbon dioxide into oxygen, the growth of atmospheric oxygen was also exponential, with O2 soon achieving one-fourth the modern atmospheric level. And through absorption in the air, the oxygen in water near the surface grew quite high. But deeper in the ocean, oxygen was rare.
And it came to pass that the predatory food chain was established: The micro-metazoa fed on micro-plants and plankton. Small creatures fed on micro-metazoa. Big creatures fed on smaller ones. The biggest ate the big.
Now in five-hundred-and-forty-million years BC, it so happened that sea level dropped abruptly. And shallow continental shelves dried up. With disappearing habitats, many metazoa died. And the archaeocyathids that dwelt in the shallow waters of the tropics went extinct. And near Laurentia the olenellid trilobites succumbed, the holmiid ones near Baltica were killed, and the redlichiids perished near Gondwana. But the swimming agnostoid trilobites survived and even thrived.
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208 Recall that in the Early Proterozoic Eon the lifetime had been five-hundred-million years! |
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The Old Testament 489
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To The Paleozoic Era ![]() |
To The Ordovician ![]() |