Its pretty interesting, it covers the initial discovery and collection of the fossils on the Burgess Shale Formation in the Canadian Rockies of B.C. by Charles Walcott in 1909, and goes on to further describe how Walcott's initial idea of how the organisms there fit into modern phylogeny was wrong.
A chapter or two later it talks about how Harry Whittington and his research students, Simon Conway Morris and Derek Briggs, went about documenting and describing the fossils systematically, revealing that the organisms were not just regular arthropods that could be shoe-horned into existing groups but instead diverse and specialized organisms different then anything living today.
I left of at the discussion and recreation of Wiwaxia corrugata, and will probably continue reading tonight.
Surprisingly, like Gould, my favourite Burgess organism is Opabinia regalis. Now if only we could build some sort of time machine. That would be exciting.
O. regalis
W. corrugata
Wiwaxia corrugata image from stephenjaygould.org Opabinia regalis image from a random google search
1 comments:
The Opabinia looks pretty badass.
Post a Comment