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The mystery of these strange creatures deepened when Dr Mary Wade of Adelaide University unearthed a curious specimen which she was sure was a segmented animal. Named Spriggina after the geologist, Reginald Sprigg, who first discovered the Ediacarans, it was so primitive, yet so undeniably complex, that it appeared to be the missing link between the complex creatures of the Cambrian and the known single-celled creatures of the pre-Cambrian era.
Initially these Ediacarans were pronounced to be an entirely separate group of organisms and were given the name Vendobionts. However, the more that was learned about them, the more they came to be accepted as the probable ancestors of today's animal kingdom. Though very primitive, some of these animals are now believed to have possessed muscles, internal organs, and head and tail regions.
How then do we account for The Urantia Book's claim that the Life Carriers first brought life to this planet only 550 million years ago?
One possibility is that this was part of the revelators' cosmology stated to be "not inspired" that may consist of a "universe frame" by which to aid our understanding of our place in the universe scheme of things. (1260)
Alternatively, it may be covered by the following statements: "The original life plasm of an evolutionary world must contain the full potential for all future developmental variations and for all subsequent evolutionary changes and modifications." (398)
"The material self, the ego-entity of human identity, is dependent during the physical life on the continuing function of the material life vehicle, on the continued existence of the unbalanced equilibrium of energies and intellect which, on Urantia, has been given the name life." (1229)
It is quite possible that the genetic potential of cell forms prior to the beginning of the Cambrian period was quite incapable of eventually generating "intelligent" living organisms. And that only an organism having a genome with the potential of ultimately evolving to have "intellect" comes within the definition of what the Life Carriers understand as "life."
If so, the probable function of the Life Carriers would have been to re-arrange existing genetic material so that, at some distant date, life having "intellect" would have a high probability of evolving. If this is true then the likelihood is that these Ediacaran organisms were the main source of the genetic material used to accomplish this task.
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