According to Darwinism, the course of evolution resembles a tree, starting from a single stem and then diverging into branches. Indeed, this hypothesis is strongly emphasized in Darwinist sources, where the concept of the tree of life is frequently used. According to this imaginary metaphor, phyla, one of the basic classifications into which living things are divided, must have "branched out" in stages.
According to Darwinism, a single phylum must first have appeared, and other phyla must then have emerged slowly through small changes and over very long periods of time. (See Phylum.) According to this hypothesis, there must have been a gradual rise in the number of animal phyla. Illustrations made on this subject show a gradual rise in the number of phyla, in conformity with Darwinist expectations that the living things should have developed this way. But the fossils refuse this imaginary tree of life. The true picture that emerges from the fossil record is that species have been thoroughly different and very complex, ever since the period when they first appeared.
Berkeley University's professor Phillip Johnson, one of the world's major critics of Darwinism, states that this fact revealed by paleontology is in clear conflict with the theory of evolution:
Darwinian Theory predicts a "cone of increasing diversity," as the first living organism, or first animal species, gradually and continually diversified to create the higher levels of taxonomic order. The animal fossil record more resembles such a cone turned upside down, with the phyla present at the start and thereafter decreasing. 259
In the Pre-Cambrian Period, there were three phyla consisting of single-celled organisms. In the Cambrian Period, however, nearly 60 animal phyla emerged all at once. Some of these phyla then became extinct in the period that followed, and only a few phyla have survived down to the present day.
The well-known evolutionist paleontologist Roger Lewin refers to this extraordinary state of affairs that demolishes all the assumptions of Darwinism:
The most important evolutionary event during the entire history of the Metazoa, the Cambrian explosion established virtually all the major animal body forms-Bauplane or phyla-that would exist thereafter, including many that were "weeded out" and became extinct. Compared with the 30 or so extant phyla, some people estimate that the Cambrian explosion may have generated as many as 100. 260
259. Phillip E. Johnson, "Darwinism's Rules of Reasoning," Darwinism: Science or Philosophy, Foundation for Thought and Ethics, 1994, p. 12.
260. R. Lewin, Science, Vol. 241, July 15, 1988, p. 291.