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  3. Creationists are deeply enamored of the fossil record, because they have bee

Creationists are deeply enamored of the fossil record, because they have bee

游客2024-10-10  31
问题     Creationists are deeply enamored of the fossil record, because they have been taught to repeat over and over that it is full of "gaps" : "Show me your ’ intermediates’ ! " They fondly imagine that these "gaps" are an embarrassment to evolutionists. Actually, we don’t need fossils. The evidence for evolution would be entirely secure even if not a single corpse had ever fossilized, for there is more than enough evidence for the fact of evolution in the comparative study of modern species and their geographical distribution. The case for evolution is watertight without fossils, so it is paradoxical to use gaps in the fossil record as though they were evidence against evolution.
    What would be evidence against evolution would be the discovery of even a single fossil in the wrong geological stratum. As J. B. S. Haldane famously retorted when asked to name an observation that would disprove the theory of evolution, "Fossil rabbits in the Precambri-an!" No such rabbits, no authentically anachronistic fossils of any kind, have ever been found. All the fossils that we have, and there are many indeed, occur, without a single authenticated exception, in the right temporal sequence. Yes, there are gaps where there are no fossils at all, and that is only to be expected. But not a single solitary fossil has ever been found before it could have evolved. That is a very telling fact. A good theory is one that is vulnerable to disproof, yet is not disproved. Evolution could so easily be disproved if just a single fossil turned up in the wrong date order. Evolution has passed this test with flying colors. Skeptics of evolution who wish to prove their case should be diligently scrabbling around in the rocks, desperately trying to find anachronistic fossils. Maybe they’ll find one. Want a bet?
    The biggest gap, and the one the creationists like best of all, is the one that preceded the so-called Cambrian Explosion. A little more than half a billion years ago, in the Cambrian era, most of the great animal phyla(门类)"suddenly" appear in the fossil record. Suddenly, that is, in the sense that no fossils of these animal groups are known in rocks older than the Cambrian, not suddenly in the sense of instantaneously; the period we are talking about covers about 20 million years. Anyway, it is still quite sudden. And the Cambrian shows us a substantial number of major animal phyla " already in an advanced state of evolution, the very first time they appear. It is as though they were just planted there, without any evolutionary history. " Evolutionists of all stripes believe, however, that this really does represent a very large gap in the fossil record.
    On the evolutionary view, are there so few fossils before the Cambrian era? Well, presumably , whatever factors applied to the flatworms(扁虫)throughout geological time to this day, those same factors applied to the rest of the animal kingdom before the Cambrian. Probably, most animals before the Cambrian were soft-bodied like modern flatworms, probably rather small like modern turbellarians(涡虫类)—just not good fossil material. Then something happened half a billion years ago to allow animals to fossilize freely—the arising of hard, mineralized skeletons, for example. [br] According to Paragraph 3, the following claims are correct EXCEPT that______.
选项 A、no animal phyla exist before the Cambrian era
B、Cambrian Explosion is a fossil discovery
C、only fossils of advanced animal phyla have been found yet
D、Cambrian Explosion indicates a gap in the animal phyla fossil record
答案 A
解析 推理题。由题干定位到第三段第三句“Suddenly，that is，in the sense that no fossils of these animal groups are known in rocks older than the Cambrian…”和第五句“…major animal phyla‘already in an advanced state of evolution，the very first time they appear．”“‘突然”是指没有发现这些动物早期进化阶段的化石，而是直接发现了这类动物较高级进化阶段的化石，可见，[A]“在Cambrian之前没有动物门类存在”不符合文意，故选[A]。[B]”寒武纪大爆炸是化石上的重大发现”，[C]”只发现了关于主要动物门类的高级进化阶段的化石”，[D]”寒武纪大爆炸显示出化石链上存在断裂的情况”，这三项都符合文意，故排除。
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