Guests: Doug Sharp and Rich Geer
Description: A study published recently suggests that spiders and their close terrestrial relatives originated from an ocean creature called Mollisonia symmetrica, an extinct aquatic creature long believed to be the ancestor of horseshoe crabs. According to this study, the fossilized brain and central nervous system pattersn they say more closely resembled those of modern spiders, scorpions, ticks and other arachnids than today’s horseshoe crabs. According to the study’s lead author, insects may have developed wings to evade nimble and hungry Mollisonia-like arachnids migrating onto land. In their own evolutionary response, spiders began creating sticky webs.
Unfortunately this creates sticky problems for evolutionists, as this now removes an ancestor for the horseshoe crab from the tree and places it in the arachnid tree. Also Doug points out that now a change from an aquatic environment to terrestrial environment needs to be explained, and that there are some places where the Cambrian is found at 11,000 feet.