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 Phylogeny and the history of language and culture 26 Aug 201226 Aug 2012 Increasingly, work is being done using the methods of phylogenetic systematics to uncover cultural and linguistic evolution. A leading lab on this work is Russell Gray’s lab at the University of Auckland in New Zealand. He and his collaborators have looked at the evolution of language, particularly Pacific languages, and… Read More
Administrative Oh ghods, I’m on TV 24 May 2008 Nothing is more excruciating to me than to see myself and hear myself. It’s even worse when I’m up against someone who presents so much better than I do. So watch Paul Myers (I think that’s how they spell his name) and me talk about Stuff at Bloggingheads.TV. The video… Read More
General Science Whewelling 1 Jun 2008 MOUSEBENDER: Good Morning. WENSLEYDALE: Good morning, sir. Welcome to the National Cheese Emporium. MOUSEBENDER: Ah, thank you my good man. WENSLEYDALE: What can I do for you, sir? MOUSEBENDER: Well, I was, uh, sitting in the public library on Thurmond Street just now, skimming through History of the Inductive Sciences… 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.