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Mark McMenamin: L. Margulis Interview & Ediacara
Scoop Feedback Re: Lynn Margulis: Intimacy Of Strangers & Natural Selection
Mark McMenamin: L. Margulis Interview & Ediacara
This is a great interview with Lynn Margulis, one of her best. . . .
Lynn is correct to say that the neo-Darwinian explanation of the role of natural selection as the agent of evolutionary change is overblown, and hence neo-Darwinism is dead. Now we can finally begin to address questions that really promise to improve our understanding of how evolution actually takes place.
For example: What role will the Ediacarans play in any post-neo-Darwinian paradigm?
First, we need to be clear that there are two types of Ediacarans, Ediacaran animals (multicellular) and Ediacaran vendobionts (metacellular), with their modular partitioning that I call metacellular iteration.
Serious paleontological effort is currently directed at distinguishing between vendobionts and animals, and each new discovery gives us an additional piece of the puzzle. It currently appears as if the metacellular (non-animal) Ediacarans outnumber the multicellular Ediacarans before the Cambrian. The proportions shift dramatically across the Precambrian-Cambrian boundary, as animals begin evolving so quickly (the Cambrian explosion) that their rapid expansion defies any Darwinian concept of gradual evolutionary divergence. This brings us to two critical questions.
First, why were metacellular Ediacarans so successful before the Cambrian, whereas animals remained in the background? Second, do the metacellular Ediacarans represent a separate evolutionary experiment in large body size, that, had it prevailed, would have given us the same panoply of body form and ability seen in the animal kingdom? If so, this would be convergent evolution on its grandest scale. Study of such cases give us our best chance at understanding the fundamental sources of biological innovation.
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