Bang goes another theory!

I watched BBC's Bang Goes the Theory last night. Liz Bonnin was very excited because she had been investigating one of the problems with Darwin's theory of evolution. It was one that he openly admitted in his book, The Origin of Species, that the fossil record was very patchy in places.

In particular, there is a lack of early fossils before what has become known as the "Cambrian explosion". The Cambrian era is where the fossil record suddenly appears. Not finding fossils before then is a big problem.

But Liz is on the case! And she showed us a fossil that had been found in pre-Cambrian rock, which proved the point that there were fossils before the "explosion". It's a charnia, so named, I assume, because it was found in Charnwood Forest in England.

But it looks like a leaf! However, it isn't, so she says, because it lived too deep under water to live like one. Hang on a minute, how deep under water could a fossil found in a forest have been? She didn't explain that. She DID say it had no mouth, but absorbed nutrients "in some way". She added that it remains a bit of an enigma!

So, unconvinced, I go onto the internet. The University of California Museum of Paleontology says of charnia and similar fossils, "Exactly what these fossils are is still not settled to the satisfaction of all."

So, hardly a great victory for Darwin, then!