EYE WASH

The eyes might have it (The Age, August 30, 2003)

About 543 million years ago, the world was a dull rather than brilliant place, inhabited by primitive sponges, jellyfish and worms. But in a dramatic event known as the Cambrian explosion, the number of major animal groups skyrocketed from three to the 38 we know today, in a matter of a few million years. "It involved a burst of creativity like nothing seen before or since. Animals with teeth and tentacles and claws and jaws suddenly appeared," says Parker, an Australian researcher at the University of Oxford in England.

The reason for this short evolutionary flourish has mystified many, not least Charles Darwin. But to Parker, the explanation now seems blindingly obvious: the evolution of the eye.

Fossils records show the first creature to develop an eye was a small trilobite that lived at the very beginning of the Cambrian period. With the power of vision, it would have found easy prey in the blind, soft-bodied creatures around it. "The evolution of that very first eye must have been a monumental event," says Parker.

"A light switch was turned on. All animals (even those without eyes) needed to be adapted to vision before they were eaten, or before they were outwitted by their prey."

That's terrific, but the usefulness of eyes doesn't explain why they evolved. Wings are useful too, as would be telepathy, but we don't have them, do we? Of course, Darwinists just respond that we don'tt need them--we've already filled our niche--and that's why we didn't evolve such things. Perfectly circular, isn't it? That which a species has it needed; that which is doesn't it didn't. Posted by Orrin Judd at September 2, 2003 1:15 PM