>I fully agree with you about what most paleontologists think and actually,
>for something like cycliophora which is small, it probably has been around
>for a long time. But my point is that one can not assume evidence where
>none exists. My belief or your belief is not evidence. Why would it be
>strange for a new phyla to arise? Is there some a priori law that says that
>new phyla can't arise? All we really have is the fossil record not a law.
>With plants, a number of phyla have arisen over the past 550 million years.
Interesting. Not a single animal phylum since Ordovician, (well,
discounting, for the moment your cycliophora) and all of the plant phyla
(or divisions, as they were called last year), have arisen since that time.
There should be some explanatory value there somewhere.
Art
http://geology.swau.edu