Rapid Burial of Molting Arthropod

For many years, uniformitarian geologists maintained that fossilization occurred very slowly. Students learned that a creature died, sank in water, was gradually buried and then was fossilized over millions of years. Evidence accrued that this is not the case (including common sense, since scavengers, bacteriological action and other factors would make burial unlikely). People are learning that rapid burial and proper conditions, not time, are the keys to fossilization.

Wikimedia Commons, Marrella splendens, Burgess Shale, British Columbia, Canada; Middle Cambrian / Wilson44691

When an arthropod molts, it is not exactly a slow event. Finding molted skins in the fossil record is not much of a surprise, but to find a fossil of a  Marrella splendens in the act itself is amazing, and a testimony of rapid burial. Creationist geologists maintain that the overwhelming majority of fossils are due to catastrophic processes, such as Noah's Flood. This find supports creationist Flood models.

Have you ever seen an arthropod (e.g. lobster, scorpion, cockroach) shedding its ‘skin’? You’ve got to be in the right place at exactly the right time—it’s all over in minutes. (When an arthropod grows, its exoskeleton coat does not, so the animal has to shed it while making a bigger one.)

So you can imagine paleontologists’ excitement on finding a fossil of the arthropod Marrella splendens, fossilized at the exact moment of moulting!

‘It’s basically an astounding specimen’, said paleontologist Derek Briggs of Yale University.

To finish reading, click on "Moulting arthropod fossilized in a flash!"