>----
> The majority of the phyla found in the China digs are now extinct.
>Many, like rotifers, have changed only in minor ways such as size, over
>530 million years, essentially contradicting the Darwinian claim of
>constant but gradual variation of all forms of life. Chen said that
>unlike the Middle Cambrian Burgess Shale in Alberta, the Chengjiang site
>has well-preserved pre-Cambrian strata, which display no clear
>precursors to the Cambrian fauna. Moreover, many Chengjiang fauna
>fossils beautifully display ãsoft tissueä of animals, such as
>intestines. There are also remains of animals, such as the chordate
>Yunannazoan, that were entirely soft-tissue creatures. Such finds are a
>rare if not unique discovery in paleontology.
> Some scientists have theorized that the ancestors of creatures that
>suddenly and mysteriously appeared in the Cambrian era may have been
>boneless creatures that could not be captured in the fossil record. But
>this explanation for a pattern of Darwinian evolution is weakened by the
>presence of soft-tissued fauna in the China fossils, and the persistent
>absence of those forms, or those of ancestors of them, in the earlier
>geological record also available at the Chengjiang site. Professor Chen
>insisted that the biological ãexplosionä exhibited at Chengjiang is not
>an illusory artifact of an incomplete fossil record, but an accurate
>preservation of the true history of life on earth. Accordingly,
>biologists should construct theories of lifeâs origin in light of this
>paleontological evidence, not in spite of it.
>