Ediacaran Fauna Does Not Support The Patterns Of Evolution

The pattern of evolution as seen from the model of descent with modification explains that species as we see them today are a result of a gradual change in a common ancestor through millions of years, giving rise to today’s diversity. As seen in the documentary, evidence that demonstrates the effectiveness of this model would be the one provided by homologies and transitional fossils. Homologies are characteristics or traits that are similar in certain species as result of both being developed and inherited to them from a same common ancestor. In the video we saw how fish species of the time are proposed as a common ancestor to all tetrapods as well as all mammals, including humans; once there was one individual who was able to adapt to live

As we know, Catastrophism suggests that the geological features seen today on earth are due to violent events such as massive earthquakes, volcano eruptions that only lasted for a short amount of time; this idea has been used also to explain how many species have gone extinct. This idea is not supported by the disappearance of the Ediacaran fauna because as it has been demonstrated, once those species became extinct, new species arise that possessed similar characteristics as the ones seen in the ones that belonged to the Ediacaran fauna. If it was to be true that such a variety of species disappeared under such drastic and violent conditions, I do not think that any close relative would have been able to live in order to pass down the traits seen in current animals, as well as in fossils found from the Cambrian period which emerged right after the extinction of the Ediacaran fauna.

Based on the information found on the textbook, I would say that the animal phyla first appeared in the fossil record approximately 542 million years ago at the beginning of the Cambrian period. Of course, not taking into account the members of the Ediacaran fauna which are only believed to be ancient relatives to animals but not actual members of the

A phylogenetic tree is a visual representation of a hypothesis on the evolutionary relationship between a determined numbers of taxa. It is considered picture representing the way the scientist think a group of species is related. In a phylogenetic tree we can observe different groups called taxa, which can be a set of organisms or group of organisms, which may or may not comprise only one species, an example would be Mammals. Sister refers to the two taxa that are more closely related on a tree, the two taxa that stem from the same node. Another element of a phylogenetic tree would be monophyletic group, which is considered to be a group of organisms that is formed by an ancestor and all descendants related to that ancestor, this is also known as a clade. There are more than one way to draw a phylogenetic tree. A way to check is to look at the nodes, if they all join the same taxa it is considered a monophyletic group. Follow the node in order to determined which groups are more closely related or are considered sister taxa; each node connects two sister taxa, if we see more than two branches from the same node, the tree has a problem known as polytomy. A Paraphyletic Group is a group that includes the most recent common ancestor but not all of its descendants. Examples