Why is Chengjiang Fauna a Challenge to Darwin's Theory of Evolution?

1Since July, 1984, Professor Hou Xianguang of Yunnan University, Researcher Chen of Nanjing Institute of Geology and Palaeontology of Chinese Academy of Sciences and Professor Shu Degan of Northwest University have found tens of thousands of marine animal fossils in Maotianshan shale in Chengjiang County, including sponges, jellyfish, coelenterates, arthropods and brachiopods. , accounting for more than 38 species 120 species, thus revealing. Chengjiang fossils not only cover most of the animal kingdom today, but also include many extinct animals with strange shapes. These findings not only provide scientific facts for the nonlinear sudden evolution of the Cambrian explosion, but also pose a great challenge to Darwin's theory of gradual evolution.

Darwin believed that evolution was a stable, gradual and continuous process in the evolutionary theory of "natural selection, survival of the fittest", and advocated that nature would not make a leap. Darwin also believed that all animals and plants evolved from some primitive type. Chengjiang Fauna shows people that various animals appeared during the Cambrian explosion, and all kinds of animals living on the earth existed almost as early as then, but they were all at a very primitive level. In the later evolution, different groups evolved according to a fixed pattern. This means that Darwin's theory is at least incomplete.

Figure 2-3 Discovery Point of Chengjiang Fauna Fossil (Photo/Zhao Hongshan)

On July 65438, 2065438, at the 36th session of the World Heritage Committee held in St. Petersburg, Russia, Chengjiang Fossil Group successfully passed the voting and was officially listed in the World Heritage List, becoming the first fossil world natural heritage in China.