Exceptional Cambrian Fossils Baffle Evolutionists

How did thousands of trilobites and
other complex animals get buried
together without damage?

 

There is no puzzle in biology that cannot be crammed into the Darwinian Web of Belief. But an impartial reader of this paper would have to wonder how the evolutionary explanation fits the evidence: thousands of perfectly-preserved Cambrian animals crammed into small areas. In some places at a site in Australia, 600 trilobites are crammed into a square meter! Yet none of them are broken or crushed. They had to be buried almost instantly.

The Emu Bay Shale: A unique early Cambrian Lagerstätte from a tectonically active basin (26 July 2024, Gaines et al., Science Advances). A quick note on jargon: the term “Konservat-Lagerstätte” (plural, Lagerstätten) refers to any exceptionally preserved fossil bed. One exceptional site for Cambrian Konservat-Lagerstätten exists at Kangaroo Island, South Australia. There, trilobites and other complex Cambrian animals—even impressions of stranded jellyfish—appear frozen in time, as if they were living and moving one moment and entombed in rock the next.

The Emu Bay Shale (EBS) of South Australia is anomalous among Cambrian Lagerstätten because it captures anatomical information that is rare in Burgess Shale–type [BST] fossils, and because of its inferred nearshore setting, the nature of which has remained controversial. Intensive study, combining outcrop and borehole data with a compilation of >25,000 fossil specimens, reveals that the EBS biota inhabited a fan delta complex within a tectonically active basin. Preservation of soft-bodied organisms in this setting is unexpected and further underscores differences between the EBS and other Cambrian Lagerstätten.

Something rapid and sudden appeared here. They use the word “flood” 3 times and “rapid” 7 times, but believe the incidents were spread out over time. They have to, because Darwinism is a system of slow and gradual change over millions of years.

On the basis of the above data, we interpret the contact between the basal conglomerate and the overlying mudstone unit (Fig. 1C) to represent a major marine flooding surface. As such, the lower mudstone unit above this flooding surface represents much or all of a transgressive systems tract deposit. We posit that the mudstone is relatively devoid of sandstone due to sea level rise and shoreline retreat.

This “sea level rise and shoreline retreat” could not have been a gradual process, because as they said above, “Preservation of soft-bodied organisms in this setting is unexpected” and unique compared to other BST fossil sites. It appears that a slurry of sediment swept the organisms from an offshore shelf without damaging them, then concentrated them into fine-graded sediments that were rapidly buried. There was no evidence of bioturbation. The organisms were buried deep and suddenly out of reach of worms and other digging organisms.

A look at the stratification diagram with photos of segments shows conglomerate layers above and below the fossil layer. Conglomerate particles range from pebbles to cobbles and large blocks. Some pebbles with angular edges must have been carried only a short distance before accumulation, not allowing rounding of the particles. Some of the fine-grained sediments have inclusions (clasts) within the layers. The conglomerate layers differ from one another:

The poorly sorted, mud-rich conglomerate beds with flat bases, dispersed cobbles, lack of grading, and massive texture (Fig. 2E) indicate a lack of flow turbulence and deposition from viscous debris flows. The conglomeratic channel fill beds with erosional bases record erosion by turbulent flows and subsequent deposition of coarse bedload. The array of mass transport, slump, and dewatering features in the middle unit indicate common liquefaction, high rates of sediment accumulation, episodic failure of the seafloor on a slope, and deposition of conglomeratic beds that ranged from viscous debris flows to turbulent mixed-bedload mass flows.

It’s not clear how “episodic” these depositional events were, though, since they surround unexpected and unique burials of animals. Conglomerate strata, indicative of rapidly moving debris flows, surround the fossils. These layers are thick, as are the fossil layers. Could they have formed slowly? or are these indicators of flood events?

On the basis of a comprehensive outcrop and borehole study of the complete succession, we divide the EBS into three informal units: a 12-m-thick lower mudstone unit that includes a basal conglomerate, a 30-m-thick middle heterolithic unit comprising mudstone and sandstone with minor conglomerate, and a 32-m-thick top unit of interbedded siltstone and sandstone. The Konservat-Lagerstätte is found in a ~10-m-thick interval of the lower EBS that spans the gradational transition from the basal mudstone unit, dominated by shale, to the middle heterolithic unit, which is dominated by sandstone (Fig. 1C and fig. S2).

The scientific team comes up with a story to explain all this. They say that the site represents offshore alluvial fans at a spot where a rift zone was dropping the water level. How unusual is such a process? Is it happening anywhere in the world today? Why there? Why then?

Exceptional Preservation

The authors know that the EBS site is part of the Cambrian Explosion, when numerous new body plans (phyla) appeared abruptly in the fossil record. This EBS site is even more distinct because of its remarkable preservation of soft tissue impressions:

The Cambrian Explosion is marked by the sudden appearance of almost all animal phyla in the fossil record, the proliferation of predation and complex food webs, and very high rates of morphological evolution across lineages. The patterns and magnitude of this event are best understood from Konservat-Lagerstätten, deposits that include spectacular preservation of soft, nonbiomineralized tissues that offer unparalleled insight into marine biodiversity in the immediate aftermath of the Cambrian Explosion (1–3).

Among these deposits, the lower Cambrian (Series 2, Stage 4) Emu Bay Shale (EBS) of Kangaroo Island, South Australia (Fig. 1) has proven particularly important. Some EBS fossils retain anatomical aspects, such as muscle fibers (4) and nonbiomineralized compound eye lenses (5–7), which are rare or absent in other Cambrian Lagerstätten. The style of preservation in the EBS thus appears to be distinct from the widespread pattern of soft-tissue preservation typical of Cambrian Burgess Shale–type (BST) deposits (8).

And so on three fronts—the lack of evolution, the soft tissue impressions down to muscle fibers and eye lenses, and the rapid deposition—the EBS site calls for alternative interpretations not beholden to the constraints of slow and gradual evolution. If flood conditions are evident, Ockham‘s Razor should give preference to a single event rather than “density-driven flows … set up by episodic fluvial discharge into the basin (i.e., floods)” proposed by the evolutionists. One flood could do the work. This is especially reasonable given that this EBS fossil bed—though unique in some respects—represents similar exceptionally preserved fossil graveyards of Cambrian animals around the world, from Canada to China to Siberia to Greenland as well as in Europe and the USA. Why not ask whether a single event was responsible?

For more on the Cambrian Explosion, see the outstanding full-length documentary from Illustra Media, Darwin’s Dilemma.

The Genesis Flood, a year-long event, could include pulses of debris flows and sediment transport over weeks and months. This single Flood event could, therefore, provide a unique and yet varied account with changing conditions as water depths oscillated during the rise of the flood waters, ebbing to and fro on a rotating earth influenced by lunar tides. That these sudden burials occurred around the world should indicate a single cause. The lack of species diversity suggests a sorting mechanism in the flows, not burial of a complete ecosystem.

The evolutionary explanation, dependent as it is on the moyboy timeline, seems strained beyond credibility. It sounds like this:

‘Simple organisms sat lazily on the seafloor for tens of millions of years, then bang! 20 new complex animal body plans suddenly appeared! Then trilobites moved lazily on the seafloor for millions of years, then bang! Mass burials occurred again and again, separated by millions of years! Believe it or not!’

Creation paleontologists should take a look at this paper and offer a thorough alternative explanation that can account for all the details. We have only touched here on possibilities and pointed out the unique features of the EBS site needing a deeper look without the Darwin-tinted glasses on.