Darwin's Dilemma

Charles Darwin was an English naturalist who firmly believed that all species of life have descended over time from common ancestry. He proposed his scientific theory that this branching pattern of what is known as evolution resulted from a process known as natural selection. Darwin composed his thoughts along with solid evidence in his work, On the Origin of Species. His book became widely accepted as did the principle of evolution. However, in 1886 in Canada, Charles Walcott discovered the fossils of the Burgess Shale. the Burgess fossils were largely regarded as evidence that the familiar phyla of animals appeared very rapidly in the Early Cambrian, in what is often called the Cambrian explosion. This view was already known to Darwin, who regarded it as one of the greatest difficulties for the theory of evolution- we call this "Darwin's Dilemma." Darwin hoped that as time moved along, more evidence would come forth that supported his theory. However, with more and more fossil discoveries in the past 150 years, Darwin's theory has become more aggravated that resolved.