The Fossil Record's Biggest Problem: Trilobites

SPEAKER A When you hear primitive fossil, you probably don't picture a creature with eyes more advanced than ours. But trilobites had compound eyes with built-in optical correction, depth perception, and almost 360-degree vision in the so-called earliest rock layers. If evolution is true, why does this kind of engineering show up fully formed at the very start? In today's episode, we'll walk through what trilobites actually show us about design, time, and the God who created it all. Welcome to Faith and Science. I'm Kaysie Vokurka. Joining me to discuss this topic is Dr. John Ashton. Welcome once again, Dr. John. SPEAKER B Hello, Kaysie. SPEAKER A Dr. John has written a book called The Big Argument: Does God Exist? And in today's program, we'll be drawing on some insights from Chapter 9. Now, according to the trilobite research in this chapter, what specific features of the trilobites' eyes challenge the idea of simple, primitive beginnings? SPEAKER B Right, well, I think one of the fascinating things about these creatures, which were like the, you know, little bugs that you see that curl up, that sometimes find around. Like slaters. Yeah, that's right. Slaters, yes. So these were creatures that grew quite quite large, some of them, you know, sort of several feet or a meter across sort of thing. And so they have a head, they have a multi-segmented body, and then a tail shield. So they've got legs, jointed legs, this sort of thing. So quite a complex animal. But as you mentioned, yes, very advanced eyes consisting of a very large number of tubes. Pointing in different directions that are all sort of corrected for the particular optical performance that they have. Now, the problem is that these extremely complex animals are found right down the bottom of the fossil chain. So they're found just above the, in the early Cambrian rocks, just above the Precambrian. So we find the earliest life forms supposedly, sort of little multicellular animals and those sort of things. But I think it's fascinating, the trilobites just appear there fully formed, extremely complex animal. SPEAKER A And this is along with, I understand, a number of other ocean-dwelling sort of creatures in that Cambrian layer, is that right? SPEAKER B Oh yeah, sure. Yes, you have the nautiloids and quite other advanced complex creatures. You know, the nautiloids we know today are quite, complex and aggressive hunters. They had jet propulsion systems for getting around. Yes, very advanced creatures. SPEAKER A So in terms of this design, if we talk more specifically about the trilobite's eye, how— if it was— if we were imagining this creature to come about through an evolutionary developmental model, what kind of eye would we expect versus what the trilobite actually has? SPEAKER B Well, we'd probably expect something that was just some sort of cell system that was able to develop and distinguish between light and darkness. SPEAKER A Right, okay. SPEAKER B And maybe some sort of movement. Because remember, with vision, we've got to have all the associated brain connections. SPEAKER A True, to interpret the data. SPEAKER B That's right. And obviously this is supposed to be, according to some, if you assume the evolutionary model, something to give it an advantage. And remember, all this complexity is supposedly arisen by random mutation. So the interesting thing about the trilobite eye is that it uses advanced optic, you know, Snell's law and so forth. These laws of optics seem to have been applied in the development of its design. So its ability to account for the angle, to interpret distance, these sort of factors, to be able to interpret depth of field, all these factors we can see are in the design of the eye, but it's extremely complex in its structure. You know, it's not just a simple system. It's all these tubes. It consists of hundreds of tubes, possibly even 1,000. I can't remember the exact data, but hundreds of tubes. They're all angled at different angles. But the data from these tubes, their structure is such that they're adjusting for their particular position. SPEAKER A Wow. Wow. So that's why they can— well, obviously there's a 360-degree viewpoint, but they're also, you mentioned about depth perception, so there's overlapping of data that the brain is correlating for and everything, isn't it? SPEAKER B [Speaker] Well, it appears from the structure and the way the eyes are, they're able to focus at different distances and therefore perceive movement from what we can see from the design in all different positions. So extremely sensitive to movement, able to pick it up. So it's an extremely complex eye design. And so for this complexity to arise from random mutations is one thing, but the other thing is, where are all the evolutionary forebears to this creature? They're not found in the older rock layers deposited below where we find the trilobites. There's no evidence of the development of this creature. Now, you know, some paleontologists even believe that it had a heart, circulatory system, had a very complex leg system, so it must have had a lot of nerves, different muscles, It must have had extremely complex DNA to enable it to produce these structures, reproductive system, all this sort of thing. So it's a, well, the bottom line is it's a very advanced creature that is right there at the bottom of the fossil layers. As you say, together with the nautiloids and so forth. SPEAKER A So obviously then it's not what the evolutionary model would expect to find this, very complex designed, very well-designed creature at that level. So what does someone who espouses that evolutionary theory, what do they do with that example? Is it something they try to avoid, or do they have a way of explaining it to try and get around the fact that this seems out of place? What would they say? SPEAKER B Well, I'm not sure. I haven't seen any satisfactory explanation for that. And I just say, oh, well, we just haven't found them yet. SPEAKER A Right. Okay. SPEAKER B So it's like we've got really missing links all the way through in the fossil record. That's what we find in the fossil record. Dr. Alp, who was at one stage president of the American Paleontological Society, He talks about this. He talks about how, or writes about, I should say, how in the fossil record we don't find evidence of evolution. We just find fully formed creatures and they're there for a while and then they become extinct, or else they're still alive today and they haven't essentially changed. You know, like crocodiles, for example, turtles, these sort of things. Turtle similarly suddenly appear in the fossil record fully formed. There are no forebears of turtles. But I think what's impressive about the trilobites is they're right at the bottom of the fossil record. So we find little, you know, spongy-type creatures, little multicellular creatures, this sort of thing. And then suddenly we find layers with these advanced trilobites in them, those advanced creatures right at the bottom of the fossil record. And the claim, what the young people are taught in schools is, hang on, there's this gradual progression complexity as evolution occurred, as more complex species occurred and occurred and occurred and occurred. But hang on, the trilobites are there right at the bottom. Yes. And they sort of, I think, gloss over it a little bit. Some evolutionists have proposed that maybe there's some sort of evolutionary Big Bang type scenario that somehow suddenly a whole lot of mutations can occur. All at once that happened to work, you know, and, and, and that's how we get these evolutionary steps taking place. And then this long period of dormancy, and then suddenly we've got another amazing burst. SPEAKER A Yes. SPEAKER B But again, this is just fairy tale stuff. It's just wishful thinking. There's no— when we see mutations require biochemical changes, you know, mutations to what? Mutations to the DNA code. To produce this, to produce mutations. We have to have chemical reactions that actually produce the new pieces of code, chemically join the atoms together to form the compounds or takes preexisting combinations of material and somehow join them up in a different way. And we don't really have mechanisms for biochemical mechanisms that will do that to the extent required to produce the vast complex changes that are represented in the structural, the DNA of a creature like a trilobite. That's the big problem, that we can't explain it scientifically in terms of known biochemistry. SPEAKER A Mm-hmm. Yeah, thank you for bringing out that point because it highlights that the trilobite case really is a, It's a thorn in the side of the model that's progressing from simple to complex because, like, it just can't happen from natural causes that this thing would suddenly appear in the way that the evolutionary theory suggests it would. SPEAKER B Yes. And one of the other factors too that's often overlooked— now, I have a trilobite fossil at home and I have friends that have other ones, and they come in all different sizes. They're all different types of trilobites. SPEAKER A Wow. SPEAKER B You know, with different— structures on their shell and this sort of thing. And that's how paleontologists identify the different types of ones. So we have a lot of complexity here. And I think what is very important is that we have a creature that has extremely advanced optical system that is multi-component optical system that utilizes known laws of physics in its structure, right? That fits in. And so, you know, for random mutations to understand, yes, we need to, have structures and crystalline structures and lens structures. You know, just the structure of the lens of the eye is something that amazes, you know, scientists that look at the structure of the lenses in the trilobite eye that give it this amazing vision. For these sort of structures and the ability to construct those and assemble them, right? So you've got your creature evolving, it's gotta be assembled from its little egg —right?—and this way it's got to grow. So there's a whole lot of programming that has to go on, cellular programming, to program the structure of the trilobite itself. Now we're just talking about our eye then. Then we've got its bodily structures, the different shell components, the different leg components, all the muscles and nerves and so forth that operate its leg system, its ability to move, let alone its reproductive system that it has, and obviously its brain to be able to interpret these visual inputs, to be able to hunt and find food, all those sort of things. And just to construct it from the initial cells of the gamete cells that have combined, there's a lot of complex programming there that often when people, paleontologists look, they forget that hang on, not only have you got the code, well, you've got an extremely complex code to code for this development, but then also when we look at the trilobites themselves, we find all these different types of trilobites, all different sizes as well. And where is this? Right in the lowest layers of the geological column, right where we should only be finding, you know, very, you know, maybe multicellular organisms forming and very basic, organisms, maybe with a few light-sensitive cells and just starting to develop structures that might look like legs and this sort of thing, not fully formed complex legs. So this is really a major problem for the evolutionary model based on the geological column. And I think it's something that, you know, people don't realize that when we look at the evidence in the fossil record, there's actually no evidence for evolution. We just find fully formed creatures that have been buried there. And essentially, we understand that the trilobites would've lived on the ocean floor, so they would've been the first to be buried. That's why they're there. That makes sense. You know, and in a lot of cases, the geologic column simply represents the order that we would expect burial of creatures in a catastrophe. Yes. SPEAKER A Thank you for really fleshing that out and highlighting about just how it's such an iconic example, the trilobite, when we're looking and discussing about this and the evidence for these different viewpoints on creation and how these creatures got there. So thank you for sharing that, Dr. John. Have you ever struggled with doubts about God's existence or known someone who has? What helped you through it? 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