News from Ediacara 27 Oct 2008 The Ediacaran period is the era between around 635Mybp and 540Mybp, just before the Cambrian. You pronounce it “ed-ee-ack-a-ran”. It is also the name of a new blog by the inimitable Chris Nedin, erstwhile paleontologist who specialised in the Ediacaran fauna before joining the Dark Side (federal public service) in order to eat. Go read Ediacaran: Past Imperfect and leave some comments. His first post is about why Anomalocaris couldn’t continue to eat trilobites. I guarantee that he will be interesting and informed. Bugger knows way too much anyway… Administrative Evolution Species and systematics
Evolution Another claim for priority from New Zealand 3 May 200818 Sep 2017 One of the enduring patterns of the history of the history of evolution is for historians to claim that their favourite individual, or their country’s best and brightest, invented evolution. The most recent appears to be this guy from New Zealand, claiming that evolution was actually invented by an artist,… Read More
Evolution New ape fossil 22 Aug 2007 The National Geographic and the news services are touting a new ape fossil found in Ethiopia as “forcing a rethink on human evolution”. As usual, the headlines are hyperbolic. This ape is fragmentary, and so far only teeth and a jaw bone have been found, and the teeth are similar… Read More
Evolution Taxonomists and bad history 21 Feb 200818 Sep 2017 In a recent paper on biological nomenclature in Zoologica Scripta, Michel Laurin makes the following comment about the stability of Linnean ranks: However, taxa of the rank of family, genus or species are not more stable. … This sad situation should not surprise us because the ranks, on which the… Read More