Life Establishment on Urantia

58:6.1450,000,000 years ago the tran­si­tion from veg­etable to an­i­mal life oc­curred. This meta­mor­pho­sis took place in the shal­low wa­ters of the shel­tered tropic bays and la­goons of the ex­ten­sive shore lines of the sep­a­rat­ing con­ti­nents. And this de­vel­op­ment, all of which was in­her­ent in the orig­i­nal life pat­terns, came about grad­u­ally. There were many tran­si­tional stages be­tween the early prim­i­tive veg­etable forms of life and the later well-de­fined an­i­mal or­gan­isms. Even to­day the tran­si­tion slime molds per­sist, and they can hardly be clas­si­fied ei­ther as plants or as an­i­mals.

58:6.2Al­though the evo­lu­tion of veg­etable life can be traced into an­i­mal life, and though there have been found grad­u­ated se­ries of plants and an­i­mals which pro­gres­sively lead up from the most sim­ple to the most com­plex and ad­vanced or­gan­isms, you will not be able to find such con­nect­ing links be­tween the great di­vi­sions of the an­i­mal king­dom nor be­tween the high­est of the pre­hu­man an­i­mal types and the dawn men of the hu­man races. These so-called “miss­ing links” will for­ever re­main miss­ing, for the sim­ple rea­son that they never ex­isted.

58:6.3From era to era rad­i­cally new species of an­i­mal life arise. They do not evolve as the re­sult of the grad­ual ac­cu­mu­la­tion of small vari­a­tions; they ap­pear as full-fledged and new or­ders of life, and they ap­pear sud­denly.

58:6.4The sud­den ap­pear­ance of new species and di­ver­si­fied or­ders of liv­ing or­gan­isms is wholly bi­o­logic, strictly nat­u­ral. There is noth­ing super­nat­u­ral con­nected with these ge­netic mu­ta­tions.

58:6.5At the proper de­gree of salti­ness in the oceans an­i­mal life evolved, and it was com­par­a­tively sim­ple to al­low the briny wa­ters to cir­cu­late through the an­i­mal bod­ies of ma­rine life. But when the oceans were con­tracted and the per­cent­age of salt was greatly in­creased, these same an­i­mals evolved the abil­ity to re­duce the salti­ness of their body flu­ids just as those or­gan­isms which learned to live in fresh wa­ter ac­quired the abil­ity to main­tain the proper de­gree of sodium chlo­ride in their body flu­ids by in­ge­nious tech­niques of salt con­ser­va­tion.

58:6.6Study of the rock-em­braced fos­sils of ma­rine life re­veals the early ad­just­ment strug­gles of these prim­i­tive or­gan­isms. Plants and an­i­mals never cease to make these ad­just­ment ex­per­i­ments. Ever the en­vi­ron­ment is chang­ing, and al­ways are liv­ing or­gan­isms striv­ing to ac­com­mo­date them­selves to these never-end­ing fluc­tu­a­tions.

58:6.7The phys­i­o­logic equip­ment and the an­a­tomic struc­ture of all new or­ders of life are in re­sponse to the ac­tion of phys­i­cal law, but the sub­se­quent en­dow­ment of mind is a be­stowal of the ad­ju­tant mind-spir­its in ac­cor­dance with in­nate brain ca­pac­ity. Mind, while not a phys­i­cal evo­lu­tion, is wholly de­pen­dent on the brain ca­pac­ity af­forded by purely phys­i­cal and evo­lu­tion­ary de­vel­op­ments.

58:6.8Through al­most end­less cy­cles of gains and losses, ad­just­ments and read­just­ments, all liv­ing or­gan­isms swing back and forth from age to age. Those that at­tain cos­mic unity per­sist, while those that fall short of this goal cease to ex­ist.