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
Academe More deaths 18 Oct 2010 Two researchers have recently died who are relevant to evolutionary biology. Leigh Van Valen, the originator of the “Red Queen Hypothesis” and a proponent of the Ecological Species Concept, died yesterday, John Hawks is reporting. I had some correspondence with him, which makes me glad that I did before he… Read More
Evolution Early vision was colourful 28 Oct 20074 Oct 2017 UPDATED: To give some of my colleagues at the University of Queensland some link love, it is being reported that they have sequenced the Queensland lungfish (currently under threat by a proposed dam) opsin genes, showing that they see in ultraviolet and visible light, as well as having the ability… Read More
Evolution Conference on religion as an evolutionary byproduct 18 Apr 2011 If you are in the UK, and if you are a postgraduate, there will be a conference on religion as an evolutionary byproduct (the “spandrel” account of religion) at the University of Birmingham on 17 May. They will cover the travel costs of graduate speakers. Contact Naomi Thompson (nxt915@bham.ac.uk) by… 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.