Evolutionary Paleontology Research Articles

Main lady of russian paleontology. To the 165th anniversary of the honorary academician Maria V. Pavlova.

Maria V. Pavlova was the first Russian woman to achieve significant national and international success in her chosen specialty – vertebrate paleontology. She introduced the scientific world to a rich collection of Russian paleontological material, most of which she had collected and classified. In addition, she laid the foundation for programs to educate professional paleontologists, geologists, and biologists who would benefit from an understanding of biostratigraphic methods. Thanks to these and many other achievements, Pavlova is recognized as one of the founders of Russian evolutionary paleontology as an independent biological discipline.

Albert Gaudry et les vertébrés fossiles du Luberon. Histoire d'une collection de référence

EXTENDED ABSTRACT Albert Gaudry and the fossil vertebrates from Luberon. The history of a reference collection. The collection of fossil vertebrates from Luberon on the one hand, and the description of the fossil animals from “Mont Leberon” by Gaudry, Fischer & Tournouer in 1873 on the other, played a major role in the emergence in France of what can be called evolutionary palaeontology. Gaudry decided to excavate the locality of Luberon (also called Cucuron) to compare its fauna to that of Pikermi described by him a few years before. In the section of the monograph devoted to vertebrates, Gaudry especially developed the biostratigraphical, paleobiogeographical, and evolutionary aspects of the fauna in a very modern manner. From the evolutionary viewpoint, Gaudry discussed the question of identifying chronological and/or geographical “races”, that is subspecies, and species. This genuine work is mainly based on the collection housed in the Museum national d'Histoire naturelle, Paris (MNHN), so that both t...

Species, speciation and palaeontology up to theModernSynthesis: persistent themes and unanswered questions

AbstractAlthough it has been variously defined and discussed, the ‘species problem’ in evolutionary palaeontology actually consists of at least three separate but closely related questions: (1) What are species in living organisms? (the ‘species nature problem’); (2) To what degree can ‘species’ as recognized in living organisms be recognized in the fossil record? (the ‘species recognition problem’); (3) To the degree that species can be so recognized, to what degree can species be studied as modern species are, that is, what can we learn about the origin and evolution of species from fossils that we could not otherwise learn? This can be called the ‘species study problem’. A critical survey of the history of thinking about the nature and origin of species indicates that answers to at least two of these three questions (the first and third) have been remarkably persistent in both palaeontological and neontological views over the past 250 years, and the range of answers to them has changed remarkably little. The nature ofDarwin's ideas on these issues, which has remained controversial, is an epitome of the persistent complexity and difficulty of the questions involved. This historical survey has a number of implications for modern palaeontological views of the nature and origin of species, including that the nature of species is a substantive (as opposed to a purely semantic) issue, likely to be decided empirically and not just theoretically, and that the roles of selection and isolation in the origin of species are likely diverse and complex.

Presentation of the 2012 Charles Schuchert Award of the Paleontological Society to Gene Hunt

I am delighted and honored to present Gene Hunt as the winner of the 2012 Charles Schuchert Award. Gene has truly become a leader in evolutionary paleontology, skilled at turning challenging problems into crisp questions that can be addressed in the fossil record in creative and rigorous ways. I recently reread a letter that rightly praises Gene for his “impressive skill with both analytic and synthetic thinking” and his remarkable ability to ask questions “in his rather unassuming way” that “strike right to the conceptual core” of an issue. What's remarkable about this letter is that it wasn't written in support of his nomination for this award but was sent in connection with his application to graduate school. This raises two points. First, it can be risky to recruit as presenter someone with a long history with the recipient, although I can assure Gene of my discretion in this regard. And second, it attests that Gene showed great talent and promise at a very early stage. Gene finished his Bachelor's in Biology at Duke University with little direct experience in paleontology, although he clearly was already interested in larger-scale, macroevolutionary questions. His first serious encounter with paleontology was as a summer intern in the Smithsonian's terrific Research Training Program, where he analyzed ontogenetic shape changes in agnostids (which may or may not be trilobites). I think he still had trilobites in mind when he arrived in Chicago, in fact I remember his frighteningly precocious brown-bag talk as an early grad student, on his agnostid work and his approaches to partitioning specimens into discrete instars. As a graduate student Gene became especially interested in bridging between micro- and macroevolution, not in a simplistic extrapolationist way but in terms of really coming to grips with how processes at the organismic and population …

Presentation of the 2010 Charles Schuchert Award of the Paleontological Society to Philip C. J. Donoghue

Ladies and gentlemen, friends and colleagues, the winner of the 2010 Charles Schuchert Award is Professor Philip Donoghue of the University of Bristol. In the natural progression of our personal lives, the transition from young snot to old fart is so gradual that one tends not to recognize it, least of all in oneself. Most of us—those further along in their careers— have passed through the stage of young, promising paleontologist to become middle-aged promising paleontologists. Not so Phil Donoghue. I first met him when he was a graduate student at the University of Leicester. We got into a discussion about the nature of conodonts and certain pet ideas of mine that I had published. Phil did not agree with me so he went down in my book as a young snot. Soon thereafter, he published a ground-breaking, paradigm-changing paper, together with Peter Forey and Dick Aldridge, on the phylogenetic position of conodonts. Now, I realized that it was I who was the old fart. Phil had demonstrated that he had skipped the young-and-promising stage. He was, and is, young and delivering. Most people who start working on conodonts tend to remain with them. There is something about that mouth apparatus and the way in which it grabs hold of you. But Phil quickly tore himself loose from its grip. He quickly demonstrated an unquenchable zeal in attacking central issues in evolutionary paleontology, such as the origin of microstructures in teeth, the origin of teeth in jaws, the origin of jaws in vertebrates, the origin of vertebrates among animals, the origin of animals in the biosphere, and so on. I fear he will not stop until he has solved the question of the origin of life, the universe, and everything else. The breadth of questions he has already addressed …

The Oxford Clay: a paleontological laboratory

The Lower Oxford Clay, a marine formation of Middle Jurassic (Callovian) age exposed in central and southern England, merits the attention of paleontologists and geochemists for several reasons. It was the subject of a classic of biostratigraphic and evolutionary paleontology by Brinkmann on the ammonites; sexual dimorphism and bioprovinciality in the same group has since been intensively studied by Callomon and others. Its exploitation by the brick industry has enabled the assembly of one of the most extensive collections of marine vertebrates by the Leeds brothers and later workers; these include the world's largest ever fish, and superbly preserved ichthyosaurs, plesiosaurs and crocodiles now dispersed to museums throughout Europe and beyond. Dinosaurs, while rare, are also diverse. The benthic fauna is dominated by abundant but not diverse molluscs, believed tolerant of soupy bottom conditions and periodic dysoxia. Coccoliths and dinoflagellates represent the phytoplankton. Aragonite, calcite and phosphate biominerals are excellently preserved. In our main study area burial did not exceed 500m.; organic matter is immature. Early diagenesis resulted in the formation of carbonate concretions that preserve original sediment fabrics elsewhere destroyed by compaction; later diagenesis brought about further mineralogical changes.Work since the 1970's has resulted in much improved understanding of the Lower Oxford Clay biota and its trophic relationships. It is useful to compare it to the more calcareous Middle and Upper Oxford Clay. The biostratigraphy is extremely well-known. The well-preserved fossils invite microstructural and geochemical studies. Economic concerns add impetus to the study of actual or potential hydrocarbon source rocks. Yet the Lower Oxford Clay is full of enigmas and questions still. It looks quiet-water but has many diastems, not all recognizable by classic criteria like shell beds. The fossil preservation might imply a high sediment delivery rate, but the sediment accumulation rate is low. It is organic-rich, but not anoxic. Where did the enigmatic ‘pendent’ bivalves live? Whence the nutrients to support the rich biota? To what extent do organic compounds survive from the primary producers, or does heterotrophic reworking dominate? Can we refine or quantify trophic relationships? We should also be able to use our ‘laboratory’ for experiments of wider significance for paleotemperatures or paleo-CO2 levels.In the Oxford Clay group of papers we attempt to summarize where traditional paleoecological analysis has led us to so far, and to show how the new approaches made possible by advances in isotopic and biomolecular paleontology can revise and refine our ideas, solve old problems and, no doubt, raise new ones. We believe our collaborative approach has much to offer for paleontologists and geochemists, as also exemplified by the other contributions to the symposium.

Faunal turnover of the Miocene mammalian faunas of Sub-Saharan Africa and the middle Miocene paleoenvironmental change

In evolutionary paleontology of terrestrial biotas, the Miocene is the most important age especially for evolution of hominids and mammalian faunas. The modern mammalian fauna appeared from the end of this age in Eurasia. In Sub-Saharan Africa, the assemblage of the late Miocene mammalian faunas was very poor, and these faunas were represented by only few faunas. Therefore, this incompleteness of the late Miocene East African faunas, it is very difficult to analyze faunal turnover of Sub-Saharan mammalian faunas and compare with Eurasian and Sub-Saharan faunas of this age.The paleontological contribution of the Japan and Kenya joint expedition to the Samburu Hills, northern Kenya covered this gap of mammalian evolution in Sub-Saharan Africa.In this work, the Miocene mammalian faunas in Sub-Saharan Africa is examined the half-life (Kurtén 1959, 1972, 1988) of each faunal assemblages (sets).Assemblage of the mammalian faunas from early Miocene was comparatively stable and had long half life in Sub-Saharan Africa on the basis of the results of this work.However, mammalian assemblage changed drastically at the middle Miocene (Astaracian) in Sub-Saharan Africa.A great number of early to middle Miocene mammalian taxa were extinct and the modern mammalian taxa appeared in this period. The half life of middle and late Miocene mammalian faunas is shortened compared with the early Miocene faunas in the East Africa. This geological event of faunal turnover occurred by the immigration and divergence of open land taxa.It is evident that the rise of open land taxa is related to the environmental change for the plateau phonolite and basalt volcanism in the middle Miocene East Africa (Pickford 1981) and the worldwide warm and arid event (savannitisation) of continental temperate zone in the middle to late Miocene (Liu 1988). In the middle Miocene (16 Ma) Pacific region, it has been proposed that the tropical event is recognized from shallow marine faunas of the Southwestern Japan (Tsuchi 1986). African and Eurasian land connection was also established before the middle Miocene (16 Ma±) (Bernor et al. 1987).The Astaracian faunal turnover in Sub-Saharan Africa is considered to be caused by immigration and diversity of open country mammalian taxa and that was related to the worldwide middle Miocene warm event and the plateau volcanism in middle Miocene East Africa. Furthermore, the Pleistocene and modern taxa and their direct ancestors of Sub-Saharan Africa appeared from the late Miocene faunas of East Africa. It has been made clear that the Namurungule Fauna is the forerunner of the modern Sub-Saharan mammalian fauna of savanna environments.As mentioned before, the Hominid Fossil was found from the Namurungule Formation (late Miocene) of northern Kenya. The savannitisation in the Sub-Saharan Africa began in middle Miocene. The origin of hominid bipedalism seems to be closely related to the environmental change from forest to open land (Foley 1984). Human evolution in East Africa is accelerated by the savannitisation of Sub-Saharan Africa which commenced earlier than that of Eurasia and continued throughout the Neogene.

The Geologic History of Diversity

A spirited debate occurred amongst the founders of geology over the geologic history of diversity (44, 104). Lyell (79) and Agassiz (1), among other adherents to strict uniformitarianism, maintained that the Earth's biota had been at a steady state for uncounted millennia. Against this view were the progressionists, who found evidence for directional change in the fossil record (e.g. 93). The debate has persisted, with occasional lulls, to the present. As recently as a decade ago, several eminent paleobiologists argued pursuasively that the taxonomic richness of marine Metazoa has been at equilibrium for much of the past 600 million years (46, 94, 96, 112). Strong arguments in support of a global increase in diversity were raised in response (139, 142). This dichotomy, equilibrium versus directional change through time, is a central theme in evolutionary paleontology (44). The precise pattern of taxonomic richness in geologic time remains the subject of considerable debate, but the broad outline of that history is now generally accepted (14, 15, 72, 73, 85-88, 91, 118, 122, 123). There were relatively few species during the Paleozoic and early Mesozoic, and diversity increased substantially in the past hundred million years. The biosphere reached the zenith of the longest sustained period of taxonomic diversification in the Earth's history in the Pliocene and Pleistocene, when climatic change and the advent of organized human activity then checked that diversification. Continuing unabated for nearly one hundred million years, this diversification

Current Issues in Evolutionary Paleontology

During the last 40 years, paleontology has developed from a largely descriptive field that supplied evidence for theories in geology and biology to a more quantitative and theoretical study that, at least in the case of biology, has made a major contribution to the development of new hypotheses. In the area of evolutionary biology, for example, paleontologists, beginning with George Gaylord Simpson, have had a major influence on scientific views of long-term evolutionary processes. The best known examples of modern evolutionary paleontology are related to two current, controversial hypotheses: (1) the theory of punctuated equilibria, and (2) the suggestion that mass extinctions may be cyclic, and might be caused by the impact of comets on the earth.

Prospectus and conception of Institute of Evolutionary Paleontology : Committee on Research Institution on Paleontology, Palaeontological Society of Japan

Prospectus and conception of Institute of Evolutionary Paleontology : Committee on Research Institution on Paleontology, Palaeontological Society of Japan

Paleobotany: Perspectives in 1980

In the past twenty years, both knowledge of fossil plants and ways of looking at the paleobotanical record have expanded significantly. Studies of Precambrian microfossils have provided insight on early photoautotrophs, while fundamental changes in perceptions of Silurian and Devonian plant remains have clarified our understanding of the colonization of land, as well as the subsequent evolution of complex stems, leaves, and the seed habit. A recurring question concerns the phylogenetic relationships of gymnosperms: is the gymnospermy found in various living and extinct taxa the result of evolutionary convergence or of common descent? Rapidly accumulating data on the reproductive and developmental biology of Paleozoic seed ferns is reopening debate on this issue. The mystery of angiosperm origins remains “abominable”, but the past two decades of research have seen convincing documentation of the initial radiation and rise to taxonomic and ecological dominance of the flowering plants.While phylogenetic and systematic botany remain at the core of paleobotanical research, increased attention is being devoted to studies of ontogeny and reproductive biology, paleoecology, taphonomy, paleophytochemistry, paleoclimatology, and paleobiogeography. Studies of evolutionary rates and diversity are in their infancy, but initial results permit an optimistic appraisal of the contributions that paleobotanists can make to evolutionary paleontology.

Gastropod radulae and the assessment of form in evolutionary paleontology

Evolutionary paleontologists seek explanations of form and pattern in a diversity of contexts. A review of this diversity is presented to underscore the difficulty of producing a general model of the factors controlling the morphology of real organisms. A model specific to the marine prosobranch gastropod radula identifies seven factors contributing to form and pattern: (1) phylogenetic, (2) mechanical, (3) ecological, (4) programmatic, (5) maturational, (6) degenerative, and (7) constructional. Aspects of radular morphology attributable to each factor are illustrated in scanning electron micrographs of radulae of marine prosobranch gastropods. Applications of and extrapolations from the radular model are made to promote recognition of a broader range of interacting factors in other systems. Some aspects of form and pattern convey important information about non-evolutionary processes and phenomena and are best examined outside of the evolutionary framework.

Progress of Paleontology as viewed in “Gryphaea Problem”

The phylogeny and mode of evolution of a Liassic oyster Gryphaea have been studied by many European and American outstanding evolutionists since TRUEMAN's (1922) classical interpretation of its morphological change. For these fifty years many useful ideas and methods in the study of morphogenesis, biometry, autoecology and functional morphology were introduced into paleontology through this material. In this report some of these works are reviewed and evaluated, and what is suggested to general evolutionary paleontology is considered.

Evolutionary paleontology and the science of form

A science of form is now being forged within evolutionary theory. It studies adaptation by quantitative methods, using the organism-machine analogy as a guide; it seeks to reduce complex form to fewer generating factors and causal influences. If a function can be postulated for a structure, then its optimum form, or paradigm ( Rudwick, 1961), can be specified on mechanical grounds. The approach of a structure to its paradigm provides the elusive criterion of relative efficiency that any science of adaptation requires. Physical laws and forces also specify that form be adapted to the requirements of size (surface/volume relationships) and space (close packing criteria). When we cannot establish paradigms on deductive criteria, an experimental approach to form is appropriate. Idealized models are favored over actual specimens because they can be built to test predetermined factors. Paleontology need not remain solely a descriptive science based on observational methods, but may adopt the experimental techniques of explanatory procedures. It is inconceivable that each aspect of a complex form is the direct product of an individual genetic instruction. We can simplify, and thereby understand, the generation of apparent complexity by recognizing that physical forces directly influence shape and that a few simple rules can fashion some very intricate final products. These rules can be programmed; computers have simulated structures that bear remarkable correspondence to actual forms; the geometry of genetic instruction need be no more complex. The rules can be used to generate a range of potential form available to such structures as the coiled shell ( Raup, 1966). Actual forms fill only a part of the total spectrum; their basic adaptation may be grasped when we realize why unoccupied areas are not utilized. Among inductive studies of ontogeny and phylogeny, univariate techniques display trends and rates of change for single characters; they have been applied recently to the periodic growth lines of fossil shells, providing thereby a paleontological input to geophysics. Bivariate procedures, as the inevitable Gryphaea story illustrates, have been plagued by errors of method. When properly applied, they serve well in the separation of species and sexual dimorphs; they are the standard tool of quantitative description. Multivariate methods are based on the more satisfactory premise that an organism grows and evolves as a set of interacting parts; interactions should be considered together, not abstracted as pairs. In the R-mode, these methods may detect interrelated character clusters, reduce the high dimensionality of a system to few interpretable directions of variation, and eliminate redundant variables. In the Q-mode, they provide an objective picture of phenetic differences among samples and specify how the measured characters produce these differences. The importance of a new methodology can be gauged by its impact on ideas of life's history. A quantitative and functional science of form suggests that parallelism and convergence are dominant phenomena, not mere taxonomic nuisances. Early in their history, most phyla display great diversity at high taxonomic levels. These are not classic adaptive radiations, but sets of competing experiments in basic design. Early experimentation is followed by standardization of the best mechanical designs. These are often improved in similar ways by many independent lineages. Standardization and improvement provide invertebrate life with a history; the Phanerozoic has not been a time of endless ecological variation on a static set of basic structures.

VI.— The Meaning of Orthogenesis

Introduction. In the last twenty years much attention has been given by palaeontologists to problems of evolution. Previously they had been chiefly concerned with the accumulation of material and with attempts at generalisations regarding the course of evolution. While the establishment of phyletic trees was the aim of palaeontologists and biologists alike, they were chiefly interested in the wider aspects of evolution such as the relationships of the various phyla and classes. On the whole, it was only towards the close of the last century that palaeontologists made use of their material to attempt the establishment of genetic lines. In this country the late S. S. Buckman was outstanding in his contributions to evolutionary palaeontology; his wide grasp of principles coupled with his close acquaintance with several invertebrate groups not only enabled him to reach valuable conclusions but provided a stimulus to students who were concerned with other groups. So much is owed to Buckman’s work that those who disagree with some of his conclusions are frequently compelled to do so in the terms which he devised. But rather more than twenty years ago palaeontologists were beginning to examine more critically some of the results arrived at by earlier workers in relation to the philosophical aspects of biology. The address to Section C of the British Association by the late Dr. F. A. Bather in 1920 thus forms a landmark and affords a classic summary of the conclusions reached in many branches of enquiry. Although in some respects many palaeontologists This 250-word extract was created in the absence of an abstract

Patterns of phyletic evolution

Research Article| March 01, 1937 Patterns of phyletic evolution GEORGE GAYLORD SIMPSON GEORGE GAYLORD SIMPSON Search for other works by this author on: GSW Google Scholar GSA Bulletin (1937) 48 (3): 303–314. https://doi.org/10.1130/GSAB-48-303 Article history received: 19 Dec 1936 first online: 02 Mar 2017 Cite View This Citation Add to Citation Manager Share Icon Share Twitter LinkedIn Tools Icon Tools Get Permissions Search Site Citation GEORGE GAYLORD SIMPSON; Patterns of phyletic evolution. GSA Bulletin 1937;; 48 (3): 303–314. doi: https://doi.org/10.1130/GSAB-48-303 Download citation file: Ris (Zotero) Refmanager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu nav search search input Search input auto suggest search filter All ContentBy SocietyGSA Bulletin Search Advanced Search Abstract OLD METHODSIn the fine optimistic years of early evolutionary paleontology, it became fashionable to draw up genealogical trees for various groups of animals, and especially of mammals, in which the supposed interrelationships of all these creatures were shown by representing the living animals as the ends of twigs and their ancestors through preceding ages as lower and connected parts of the stems, branches, and trunk of the tree of life. It was generally recognized that certain details remained to be filled in, but on the whole the concept was simple and satisfying, and much of the work of that period gives the impression that the missing details were not considered important and that their discovery was considered imminent.The use of such graphic means of indicating descent is still common, and there are few paleontologists who have not constructed some sort of phyletic tree, either in words or in . . . This content is PDF only. Please click on the PDF icon to access. First Page Preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this article.