A group of Australian scientists from the University of Adelaide claims that they may have determined the rate of life evolution. Charles Darwin’s “Big Bang” theory explains the sudden appearance of modern animals in Cambrian period – some 530 million years ago.
Matthew Wills, an evolutionary biologist in the Bath University in the United Kingdom explained how the Cambrian Period divided Earth into two. First is the prehistoric belief that most single-celled living things lurked on the mud and did modestly. The second theory is that there is a place in Earth where most living things like our modern animals have been loitering.
Darwin’s problem arose when these living things suddenly appeared in the fossil record and critics have argued how this could happen. Scientists tried to map out a tree of life but struggled to branch out as they were wondering why different fruits quickly appear.
The Australian scientists believe that their findings hold the answer to Darwin’s problem. Michael Lee, a scientist from the University of Adelaide and the lead author of the study wrote, "The abrupt appearance of dozens of animal groups during this time is arguably the most important evolutionary event after the origin of life.”
Lee added that the impossible sudden rates of evolution meant by this Cambrian explosion have long been oppressed by evolution’s opponents. Darwin even considered that the sudden rates of evolution were at odds with the usual evolutionary processes.
The Australian scientists, together with their colleagues from the Natural History Museum in London, explored 62 different genes and 395 physical traits of the arthropods, with the aid of the mathematical models and fossil record, formulated a time frame with which differences have occurred.
The findings imply that the evolution’s averagely fast turn, which was four times faster than 500 million years later, was enough to explain the sudden appearance of modern animals in the fossil record in the Cambrian period.
The researchers admitted that they need further studies to establish the rate of evolution but considers this study as “an excellent first step”.
The study was published in the online journal Current Biology.
