For the wisdom of this world is foolishness with God.
1 Corinthians 3:19
"Pikaia, a supposed vertebrate ancestor from the Middle Cambrian of the famous Burgess Shale of the Canadian Rocky Mountains, which offers a marvelous glimpse into the output of the Cambrian Explosion.
1 Corinthians 3:19
"Pikaia, a supposed vertebrate ancestor from the Middle Cambrian of the famous Burgess Shale of the Canadian Rocky Mountains, which offers a marvelous glimpse into the output of the Cambrian Explosion.
Recently, this famous fossil organism has been totally reinterpreted and its reconstruction literally turned upside down. Such major reinterpretations of fossil animals from the Burgess Shale have happened before more than once.
Fossil fragments of isolated body parts of giant anomalocaridid
arthropods (Radiodonta) were originally considered as very different animals: the circular mouth was described as assumed jellyfish Peytoia, the body was described as assumed sea cucumber or sponge Laggania, and the cephalic appendages were identified as abdomen of a fossil phyllocarid shrimp Anomalocaris.
Fossil fragments of isolated body parts of giant anomalocaridid
Only after discovery of more completely preserved specimens were the previous erroneous interpretations recognized and the body reconstruction revised into what we know today as the large Cambrian predator Anomalocaris and its relatives.
Stephen Jay Gould (1989) commented in his bestselling book Wonderful Life that the story of Anomalocaris is “a tale of humor, error, struggle, frustration, and more error, culminating in an extraordinary resolution that brought together bits and pieces of three “phyla” in a single reconstructed creature, the largest and fiercest of Cambrian organisms.”
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