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
Epistemology Darwinian evolution for culture 15 Nov 2009 Following on from my piece about songs and scientists, underverse (Chris Schoen) has taken me to task: … it becomes easy to see one of the flaws in memetic thinking. Changes in “culture” differ from changes in biology in that they are not random; they are directed toward a specific… Read More
Evolution Myth 6: Darwin thought everything was due to natural selection 4 Mar 200918 Sep 2017 Darwin’s Dangerous Idea, according to Daniel Dennett in the book by that name, is natural selection. This is often referred to as “Darwin’s theory”. But Darwin did not always think evolutionary events or processes were due to natural selection. Read More
Evolution Some hominid evolution items 19 Aug 2009 Two items worth reading: Mailund notes that the 2006 claim of complex speciation, involving gene exchange for some time after the chimp and hominid lineages split, has been argued against on the grounds that high rates of sperm production in humans and chimps could generate the effect. Pleiotropy discusses the… Read More