Rethinking the Cambrian 17 Mar 200818 Sep 2017 Ever since Gould’s Wonderful Life: The Burgess Shale and the Nature of History, the popular view has been that the Cambrian was an “explosion” of living forms, and for some, usually but not always creationists, this has been touted as contrary to “Darwinism” (whateverthehell that is) or even evolutionary theory. PvM at Panda’s Thumb has a nice post about this and recent work. And I’m not just saying that because he links to one of my articles on the web. One point I would make, that he doesn’t mention, is that figures derived from “genera” or “classes” in the fossil record are weak signals about actual diversity at best, because both are incommensurable across the tree of life and are purely conventional artifacts. So it may be even better than PvM says, because the metrics used to identify diversity at that time are flawed. Evolution Species and systematics
Epistemology You and me, baby, ain't nothing but mammals 7 Apr 2010 The song of the title of this post is a catchy and highly amusing piece that suggests that if we’re just mammals we should have sex. It’s sort of a low brow version of Andrew Marvell’s To his coy mistress. Instead of Time’s wingéd chariot, we should do what mammals… Read More
Evolution Fun in Guelph 27 Jan 2009 If you happen to be near the University of Guelph, then not only is Massimo Pigliucci giving a talk there, but there’s this event by my friend and former colleague, Stefan Linquist: Read More
Biology Aware is finished. Now for something different 14 May 202414 May 2024 So I finished presenting the book Aware on my substack, which will now ferment in my bottom drawer (metaphorically) until it ripens. While that is happening I am preparing to edit some nineteenth century sources for discussions of classification, taxonomy, species, higher and lower taxa, and many other subjects. Does… Read More
While it may seem sudden, many trace fossils suggest a longer history before fossils of large conspicuous organisms become obvious. The oldest macrofossil I have heard of is a small seaweed, perhaps of red algal affinities, but it’s dated to 2.1 gya, which greatly predates the Cambrian explosion (Han & Runnegar, 1992, Science, 257:232). So organisms were playing around with being larger than plankton way before the Cambrian. Oh, but wait, this isn’t an animal, so maybe it doesn’t count.