Creatures of Cambrian May Have Lived On

[Swift]

From The New York Times

Ever since their discovery in 1909, the spectacular Burgess Shale outcrops in the Canadian Rockies have presented scientists with a cornucopia of evidence for the “explosion” of complex, multicellular life beginning some 550 million years ago.

...

But the fossil record then goes dark: the Cambrian-period innovations in life appeared to have few clear descendants. Many scientists thought that the likely explanation for this mysterious disappearance was that a major extinction had wiped out much of the distinctive Cambrian life. It seemed that the complex organisms emerging in the Cambrian had come to an abrupt demise, disappearing with few traces in the later fossil record.

Not everyone was convinced, however, and now a trove of 480-million-year-old fossils in Morocco appears to strike a blow to the idea of a major extinction. The international team of scientists who discovered the 1,500 fossils said their find shows that the dark stretch in the fossil record more probably reflects an absence of preservation of fossils over the previous 25 million years.

A couple of nice photos of a few of the finds in the article - very fine details have been preserved.

[FarmMarsNow]

Interesting news. I should read up sometime.

[jlhredshift]

And if you wish to see what a magnificent job the mods here do, just read the comments linked on the NY Times page to see how this board could devolve without them.

[FarmMarsNow]

Thank the flying spaghetti monster they weren't found in Texas...

What is it with the flying spaghetti monster people, and what's wrong with Texas? Don't they have spaghetti in Texas?

Another nail in the coffin of Creationism. Great work!

I am not a creationist since my early twenties. Buried alive it would seem, because it is not dead. Some people think that evil is a powerful and intangible black goo -- or even worse -- a living destructive thing. As long as that is their perception, that imaginary stuff can be painted onto anything whether it be good or bad. For them, evil is a thing that exists and must be identified and cleaned. Since it exists, it must exist somewhere so the only question is where. Worse than that, it has been identified in the scientific community.

...Paleontology is a ridiculous waste of time and if you don't believe me, ask our governor....

Well, maybe there aren't many fossils in Virginia? Maybe there are though.

[dgavin]

...Paleontology is a ridiculous waste of time and if you don't believe me, ask our governor....

Who in thier right mind would believe anything a politication said?

[BigDon]

Hey, we don't have to make an interesting subject a bash fest. The internet is already too full of it.

Wasn't the radiation and some of the extinctions associated with the developement of vision? I' msuddenly too tired to explain.

[FarmMarsNow]

That is a good point, BigDon. I do not know about the evolution of eyeballs. I do think that if there was an explosion of new species at some point, then its a good idea to wonder why and by what mechanism. Some terminology might help. I wonder if there are different terms to describe when a species is replaced by a derivative vs when it has branched into two or more; or terms if a branch no longer competes for the same resources, etc. Vocabulary like that might help discuss about how evolution progressed.

[BigDon]

In other words, if this was a discussion amongst lettered paleo-ecologists it would be more interesting?

I would have to agree. I'm sure one or two are lurking about here somewhere.

[mike alexander]

Darwin used the metaphor of the tangled stream bank to illustrate the complex interrelations of species in real time (the ecology, if you will). He used the tree of life to illustrate the branching interrelatedness of species through time. And he used the concept of the wedge, where all these different species were being hammered into an opening with limited space by natural selection, with some becoming firmly anchored and others being broken or squeezed out.

[JonClarke]

Gould's Wonderful Life and Morris's Crucible of Creation are the two most accessible works on the Burgess Shale.