Genesis 1:21 states that God created great whales, and every living creature that moveth, which the waters brought forth abundantly, after their kind, and every winged fowl after his kind. This sudden appearance of the first life in the oceans has been confirmed by the fossil record. Paleontology has demonstrated conclusively that life in the early Cambrian Period (the period when life first appeared, corresponding to Genesis 1) came about with extreme rapidity, not slowly and incrementally.
The October 1993 issue of National Geographic, for example, featured an article entitled The Cambrian Period: Explosion of Life. The article reported that "the modern animal groups emerged almost at once, making the Cambrian explosion appear to be the big bang of zoology." (p. 125)
The greatest deposit of these early life-forms is the Burgess Shale deposit in Canada. Examined by paleontologist Desmond Collins of the Royal Ontario Museum, the Burgess fossils show that the basic premise of Genesis-style creation is true: "Collins sees little evolutionary change among these animals....'New fossils found in China and Greenland look very much like the Burgess animals,' says Collins. 'Yet they are up to 15 million years older.'" (p. 125)
In 1995, a similar article appeared in Time magazine, which noted that "the Cambrian is a period distinguished by the abrupt appearance of an astonishing array of multicelled animals -- animals that are the ancestors of virtually all the creatures that now swim, fly and crawl through the visible world. Indeed, while most people cling to the notion that evolution works its magic over millions of years, scientists are realizing that biological change often occurs in sudden fits and starts. And none of those fitful starts was more dramatic, more productive or more mysterious than the one that occurred....all around the world [during the Cambrian].... (Dec. 4, 1995, p. 67)
The article further stated: "Over the decades, evolutionary theorists beginning with Charles Darwin have tried to argue that the appearance of multi-celled animals during the Cambrian merely seemed sudden, and in fact had been preceded by a lengthy period of evolution for which the geological record was missing. But this explanation, while it patched over a hole in an otherwise masterly theory, now seems increasingly unsatisfactory. Since 1987, discoveries of major fossil beds in Greenland, in China, in Siberia, and now in Namibia have shown that the period of biological innovation occurred at virtually the same instant in geologic time all around the world". (p. 68) This, of course, is the basic thrust of the Genesis account -- life did not develop gradually over the eons, but appeared suddenly all around the planet.
A further confirmation of Genesis provided by these discoveries is that the act of Creation only occurred once: "Even more speculative are scientists' attempts to address the flip side of the Cambrian mystery: why this evolutionary burst, so stunning in speed and scope, has never been equaled....There is no record of new phyla emerging later on...." (p. 74) This is just what Genesis indicates: there is only one creation account in the Bible, and it appears at the very beginning. After that, there is no sign of God having re-created, or having duplicated His previous creation.
The reporters at Time seem baffled by this stunning confirmation of Genesis: "Where did this extraordinary bestiary come from, and why did it emerge so quickly?" Time asks rhetorically. "[It is] a burst of creativity like nothing before or since...." (p. 68) The writers muse, "Of course, understanding what made the Cambrian explosion possible doesn't address the larger question of what made it happen so fast." (p. 73)
If they believed Genesis, they would not be in such a state of confusion and wonder. The discoveries that they reported merely serve to confirm what Moses had been saying all along.
Stephen Caesar is a magna cum laude of Tufts University, and is currently pursuing his master's degree in anthropology/archaeology at Harvard University.
Author, Stephen Ceasar
stephencaesar@hotmail.com
*The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author, who is solely responsible for content.* Editor, THE EDIFIER