Everybody agrees there's some interesting and unique life forms in the Ediacaran, but even after, you know, decades of being aware of them, there have been many paleontologists, many paleobiologists who would say, yeah, they were sort of an evolutionary dead end, an interesting type of organism, group of organisms that went extinct. And they did not give rise to the Cambrian animals.

Whatever they were, they're not the evolutionary precursors that we need to find

to explain how the Cambrian animals evolve.

ID, the Future, a podcast about evolution and intelligent design.

New fossil discoveries from China are being healed as evidence that could reshape our understanding of the origin of complex animal life.

Well, does the new find solve the mystery of the Cambrian explosion?

Are the headlines about these fossils justified?

Are these, in fact, the long-lost ancestors of the Cambrian animals that we've been

all looking for? Well, let's find out. Welcome to ID the Future. I'm your host, Andrew McDermott.

Today, Dr. Casey Luskin joins me to examine the evidence, the ambiguity, and the ongoing controversy

surrounding newly reported Ediacine bilaterians.

Casey is a regular voice on ID the Future, but for those of you who may not be so familiar with

him, he serves as Associate Director of Discovery Institute's Center for Science and Culture,

where he helps direct the ID 3.0 research program and assists and defend scientists, educators, and students who seek to

freely study research and teach about the scientific debate over Darwinian evolution and ID.

He holds a PhD in geology from the University of Johannesburg, as well as graduate degrees in

science and law, giving him expertise in both the scientific and legal

dimensions of the debate over evolution. Dr. Luskin has been a California licensed attorney

since 2005, practicing primarily in the area of evolution education in public schools,

as well as defending academic freedom for scientists who face discrimination because of their support for intelligent design.

On top of all this, it's worth noting that Casey was the primary research assistant for Steve Meyer

when he wrote the book Darwin's Doubt about the Cambrian explosion.

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