Walcott, the Burgess Shale and rumours of a post-Darwinian world
Simon Conway Morris email
Department of Earth Sciences, University of Cambridge, Downing Street, Cambridge, CB2 3EQ, UK
Open Archive
The earliest known fish are now known to occur in the Lower Cambrian.
Here is Myllokunmingia from the Chengjiang Lagerstätte in Yunnan (top), with accompanying camera-lucida drawing (bottom). Photography courtesy of Degan Shu (Early Life Institute, Northwest University, Xi'an).
Summary
More than one of my colleagues has cast her eye round the packed conference room and then murmured sotte voce that, well, she was suffering just a little from Darwin fatigue. So too, more than one commentator has remarked how the bicentenary of his birth and the 150th anniversary of the Origin have completely outstripped any episode of previous rejoicing. And to play the curmudgeon one might wonder if our obsession with the centential and hemi-centential actually reflects a deeper schadenfreude, a loss of way, an eclipse of confidence. While evolutionary biologists caper round the Darwinian totem, other drum-rolls from Hades remind musicologists that Georg-Friedrich Händel (d. 1759), Joseph Haydn (d. 1809) and Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy (b. 1809) must be dragged from their crepuscular retreats, while enthusiasts for Alfred Tennyson (b. 1809) listen anxiously for the creak of Charon's oars conveying their hero back for a brief exposure in the sunlit pastures.
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Interessante, o nome deste blog é Desafiando a Nomenklatura científica, mas foi registrado no Blogger como pos-darwinista. Por que será, hein???
