Brysse, Keynyn Alexandra Ripley (Author)
The Burgess Shale, discovered in 1909, contains the fossilized remains of unusual marine animals from shortly after the Cambrian explosion. This thesis delineates three distinct phases in Burgess Shale research. It examines why the Burgess Shale has inspired such dissimilar interpretations and asks what the consequences of these different views are for our understanding of the tempo and mode of evolution and the place of systematics in evolutionary biology. The Burgess Shale fossils were initially classified by Charles Doolittle Walcott as primitive members of modern groups. Later, in the 1960s, Cambridge (UK) paleontologists, led by Harry Whittington, came to think of the Burgess creatures as unique evolutionary experiments, unrelated to modern animal phyla. This "weird wonders" view was taken to its extreme by Stephen Jay Gould. Gould used the Burgess fossils to advance a highly distinctive theory of the tempo and mode of evolution, and to argue that morphological disparity has decreased over time, not increased as commonly believed. Gould held to this view until his death. The third phase, initiated by Derek Briggs and Simon Conway Morris in the 1980s, gives a very different interpretation to the Burgess Shale. On this new understanding, disparity has not decreased, and the Burgess creatures are no longer weird wonders deserving unique phylum status, but are now seen as "stem groups" on the evolutionary paths leading up to the modern phyla. This thesis investigates the motivations of the protagonists in this debate. Briggs and Conway Morris each arrived at their Phase 3 view for different reasons. Briggs credited the adoption of cladistics, a new method of classification. Conway Morris credited the increased information provided by the discovery of new fossils, and the re-interpretation of known fossils. Despite the fact that Gould and Conway Morris both dismissed cladistics as an inadequate tool for the study of biological diversity, they held radically divergent views about the diversity of the Burgess Shale. This dissertation will show that these men had different theories of the tempo and mode of evolution; therefore, each saw the Burgess fossils in the light of his own theories, assumptions, and goals.
...MoreDescription Cited in Diss. Abstr. Int. A 69/12 (2009). Pub. no. AAT NR44745.
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