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You say the Cambrian “explosion” took 70-80 million years, as if that is established fact. There is still massive debate over whether this took 10 million years or 100 million. And frankly, nobody knows. Did it take 80 millions years to develop eyes or develop skeletal systems? Call me skeptical, because the record doesn’t seem to show it.

Thanks for informing me that the experts can identify the entire line of horses back to the fish. Please do me a favor and just list 20 or so predecessor creatures down the chain of evolution for the horse, in the direction of fish. Just the names are fine. I can Google the pictures.

Since I keep getting stymied earlier than Hyracotherium, could you please start with that animal and go back 20 known species of creature before that. That would go a long way toward relieving my doubts about the theory of evolution. 55 million years ago is really recent history in evolutionary time so it would be nice if you could take the horse’s ancestry back 250 million years or so.

Thanks.

The best estimates are that it took place over a span of 70-80 million years, but the fact is that the exact amount of time is irrelevant, even if it were knowable. We don't know exactly when Jesus was born, either, and that took place only 2,000 years ago. Should we doubt that Jesus was born because we don't have an exact time and date? No, no more than we should doubt that the Cambrian "explosion" actually took place over a vast period of time just because we can't determine exactly how long it took. The big picture take-home message is that it was not a sudden process, and it took place over a sufficient period of time to account for all the phyla that appeared in that time.

And, as to how long did it take to develop eyes or skeletal systems? I don't know. Furthermore, such a question cannot even be answered without precisely defining what you mean by each term, and exactly which kind of eye or skeletal system you are referring to. By skeletal systems, do you mean the crystalline skeletal systems of single cell diatoms? Or are you referring to the exterior chitinous covering of insects? Or maybe you mean the single structure that helps to stiffen squids, which is often found in parakeet cages? By eyes, do you mean the light-sensing spot of unicellular euglena, or the eye pits of many gastropods?

Try googling the phylogenetic trees. You're basically insisting that I provide a name for every point along a continuum, which no one can do. And then, maybe you can answer this question, which I found here:

Creationists who wish to deny the evidence of horse evolution should careful consider this: how else can you explain the sequence of horse fossils? Even if creationists insist on ignoring the transitional fossils (many of which have been found), again, how can the unmistakable sequence of these fossils be explained? Did God create Hyracotherium, then kill off Hyracotherium and create some Hyracotherium-Orohippus intermediates, then kill off the intermediates and create Orohippus, then kill off Orohippus and create Epihippus, then allow Epihippus to "microevolve" into Duchesnehippus, then kill off Duchesnehippus and create Mesohippus, then create some Mesohippus-Miohippus intermediates, then create Miohippus, then kill off Mesohippus, etc.....each species coincidentally similar to the species that came just before and came just after?

(I will point out that I do not use the term "creationist" as the word was used in the above quote without specifying that I only refer to those who believe the book of Genesis is a literal account of a creation event that occurred 6,000 years ago--eDM.)