Oldest cephalopods may have been found, claim scientists via reports in ScienceDaily 23 March 2021, Science Alert 25 March2021 and Communications Biology 23 March 2021, doi: 10.1038/s42003-021-01885-w.
Scientists at the University of Heidelberg have studied fossils from the Avalon Peninsula, Newfoundland, Canada, and identified them as fossil cephalopods. Living cephalopods include octopuses, squid, cuttlefish and the nautilus. All are believed to be “highly evolved invertebrate organisms” whose ancestors arose from bottom dwelling shelled creatures that crawled on the ocean floor.
Cephalopods ancestors are believed to have developed the chambered shell, (phragmocone), as seen in the living nautilus, where the chambers are linked by a structure named a siphuncle, which enables them to fill the shell with gas and both move in the water yet control their buoyancy. The Avalon Peninsula fossils are described as “straight, elongate conical cephalopod phragmocones” and some show signs of having a siphuncle.
The fossils are dated as 522 million years old, putting them in the early Cambrian period, and making them 30 million years older than the previously dated oldest fossil cephalopods. The researchers claim this is “an unexpected early stage of the Cambrian” for the existence of such complex creatures.
Anne Hildenbrand, one of the researchers, commented: “That would mean that cephalopods emerged at the very beginning of the evolution of multicellular organisms during the Cambrian explosion.”
Links: Science Alert, ScienceDaily
Editorial Comment: Finding complex creatures in any rock layer is not a problem if you understand that God made complete fully functioning creatures, according to their kinds, so cephalopods have always had the distinctive features that make them different from other sea creatures. Claiming these fossils are the oldest cephalopods, makes them sure evidence that cephalopods are still the same kind.
No-one has seen a bottom dwelling shelled creature change into a multi-chambered creature that can control its buoyancy. To make this change, i.e. adding the phragmocone and siphuncle PLUS the nervous system connections for controlling and using it effectively, requires new genetic information, and information is always the product of a mind, never of chance. Information does not spontaneously arise from matter alone
Creation Research News 7 April 2021
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