New Cambrian Discoveries

New sites for Cambrian fossils are revealing new species and details of known species. Exciting times. Cracking the Cambrian: New fossils and sites are helping make sense of the mysterious flowering of animal life half a billion years ago.

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Throughout much of Cambrian paleontology, that's the gamea high-stakes, sometimes contentious race to find diagnostic body parts on known or new fossils, make arguments about what taxonomic groups they belong to, and maybe revise evolutionary history in the process.

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In the past few years, paleontologists have approached the problem with an array of new techniques. Those include scanning electron microscopes, which can discern a specimen's chemical makeup as well as image it, and computerized tomography (CT) scans, which can penetrate fossils without scraping away material.

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The uncertainties leave paleontologists ever hungry for newer, better specimens. When there is a debate, you bring a new fossil and say, ‘Look, this is the feature we see,’ Caron says, warming up in a tent perched high above Tokumm Creek. Without fossils, it's speculation.

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Each successive excavation in this valley has targeted the same band of rock, which records a single slice of geologic time. But each dig has yielded a different array of new species. That's because conditions varied across the ancient sea floor, favoring different animals. Such variation is not a shock to anybody that has ever strapped on a snorkel and swum around, Gaines says. But this vast, wide-open valley captures that kind of diversity at a single moment, allowing glimpses of how the earliest animal ecosystems were structured.

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Links and Information please.Edited by Tanypteryx, : No reason given.

Thread copied here from the New Cambrian Discoveries thread in the Proposed New Topics forum.

They're still looking for that rabbit aren't they?

Well, the ones hoping for that rabbit, are not actually doing any of the science.

The cool thing though is that if anyone did find a rabbit science would have to incorporate it into its thinking somehow.No doubt there would be enormous difficulties making people accept the fact of it, but if finally it was proven, it would ultimately be accepted and the theory would change.

Yep. It would also spur a flurry of research trying to understand how the rabbit managed to evolve in a world without any land plants or any obvious ancestors.What interests me is that organisms completely new to science are being discovered in these deposits and that even in these early times of complex life there were already complex interconnected ecosystems.

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Yep. It would also spur a flurry of research trying to understand how the rabbit managed to evolve in a world without any land plants or any obvious ancestors.

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What interests me is that organisms completely new to science are being discovered in these deposits and that even in these early times of complex life there were already complex interconnected ecosystems.

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It seems that there might already be work on some of these issues.A scientist had a big (1114 pages?) work published, but it seems he died just before.Is this type of thing going to be seen as "pseudo science"? (The cover seems to have Velikovsky and Darwin pictured side by side)Here is the blurb.

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The basis of evolutionary change, according to Ginenthal, is master genes that have been conserved from the time of the Cambrian explosion to the present. By following these master genes and using the fossil record as the true evidence of evolution, is it shown why no new phyla have developed since the Cambrian explosion and why the chronology for dating evolution is in serious error. Ginenthal then outlines the evolution of the vertebrates from their earliest appearance to the present via saltations that morph and metamorph new species at the times of Velikovskian global cataclysms. Throughout the book, Ginenthal elucidates how the master genes operate to do this and also presents new evidence connecting this process to physics. Those who read this volume will have an entirely new understanding of evolution and may never think about it in the same way.

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I will surely read this work some time (as the dead author was amazingly good at using primary scientific sources and journals) but does this sound screwed up at first glance?How screwed up?

This is a thread in the Links and Information Forum", so not really the place for discussion about what seems to me to be unrelated except for the mention of "Cambrian."I tend to dismiss books and articles that mention "Velikovskian global cataclysms" since reading some of Velikovsky's books back in maybe the '70s. I suspect it will indeed be seen as pseudo science. That's how I see it anyway.If you want to discuss this I suggest you propose a new topic.

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This is a thread in the Links and Information Forum", so not really the place for discussion about what seems to me to be unrelated except for the mention of "Cambrian."

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I tend to dismiss books and articles that mention "Velikovskian global cataclysms" since reading some of Velikovsky's books back in maybe the '70s. I suspect it will indeed be seen as pseudo science. That's how I see it anyway.

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If you want to discuss this I suggest you propose a new topic.

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It is very much on topic, if you focus on the comments about a (possible archaeological scenario) "rabbit"-like creature (perhaps a remnant from some isolated island that existed only for a few million years) in the Cambrian (and with the need for a modified theory of evolution to explain it).The possibility of non-DNA genetic "information" being present, but not apparant (according to current understanding of genetics), could explain how the "Rolly Polly" crustacean has some sort of genetic expression that makes it nearly identical to a few millipedes (including the rolling ball feature).Woodlouse - WikipediaPill millipede - WikipediaConsider is the recapitulational stages of embryology and then the issue of metamorphosis.But, first Velikovsky:The "Velikovsky" part seems to be only loosely related.(All Velikovsky proposed, as far as I have read, is that "Numerous catastrophes or bursts of effective radiation must have taken place in the geo-logical past in order to change so radically the living forms on earth" which would be consistent with "The fact that the geological record shows a sudden emergence of many new forms at the beginning of each geological age" and would solve the problem that comes from "The fact that in many cases the intermediary links between present-day species are missing, as well as those between various species of the geological record, a vexing problem")Velikovsky simply suggested rapid mutational change in the DNA.End Velikovsky.The theory of Ginenthal goes beyond the standard issue of mutations as they WERE (and perhaps are) commonly understood.Ginenthal seems to be saying that there was alot of non-DNA type of genetic material that ALREADY had lots of "information".Back to embryology.Franoise Jacob and Jacques Monad found "control genes" to be an important issue to understand when they worked on bacteria.They were quoted:

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A Feeling for the Organism(10th Anniversary Edition)The Life and Work of Barbara McClintock
Evelyn Fox Keller

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p. 176

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The fundamental problem with chemical physiology and embryology to understand why tissue cells do not all express, all the time, the potentialities inherent in their genome The discovery of regulator and operator genes and the repressive regulation of the activity of structural genes reveals that the genome contains not only a series of blueprints, but a coordinated program of protein synthesis and the means of controlling its execution.

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Consider the Nobel laureate, Barbara McClintock.Evelyn Fox Keller, inA Feeling for the Organism(10th Anniversary Edition),The Life and Work of Barbara McClintock(NY 1983), said that McClintock was responsible for "turning biology into a bona fide field of science a science like physics"On page 177, Keller wrote:

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When Barbara McClintock saw Monad’s and Jacobs first paper in Comptes Rendu, she was overjoyed. Here was an elegant analysis of a bacterial system that she herself worked out for maize. Common input was the identification of two [sets of] controlling elements: one adjacent to the other independently situated and through its effect on the first controlling elements, exerting indirect control on the gene. The fact that the controlling elements in her own system were transposable [movable] may have been essential to their initial discovery, but it was not essential to the operation of such a control system. Indeed, in one class of gene loci under control of McClintock’s System, both the element analogous to what Monad and Jacob called the "operator" gene and the [McClintock] system itself [did not move but] remained fixedjust as the bacterial system.

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"The similarities between [control genes in] her own work and the work of Monad and Jacob were so striking that the latter seemed to provide just the kind of independent confirmation needed to the resistance she had thus far encountered [to the concept of control genes for rapid saltational evolution]

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Promptly, she sent off a paper to American Naturalist entitled "Some Parallels Between Gene Control Systems in Maize and in Bacteria," in which after outlining the basic features of [her] system, she concluded:

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"It is expected that such a basic mechanism of control of gene action will be operative in all organisms. In higher organisms, lack of means of identifying the components of a control system of this type may be responsible for delay in recognition of their general prevalence, even though there is much genetic and cytological evidence to indicate that [genetic] control systems to exist. It is anticipated, however, that control systems exhibiting more complex levels of integration will be found in the higher organisms."

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The Tangled Field: Barbara McClintock’s Search for the Pattern of Genetic Control
Nathaniel C. Comfort
(Cambridge, MA 2001)

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p.221

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In 1971, McClintock asked an audience at Cold Spring Harbor "If all organisms have the same basic parts and can produce basic tools, why do we have so many different organisms?" Her answer was that different organisms simply express different patterns. In an interview with Will Provine and Paul Sisco in 1980, she explained, "Years ago, I began to realize that any genome can make any other, practically." The genome she imagined was a set of interchangeable parts like an erector set, by using different combinations of genes in different arrangements, one can build almost any organism from a single set. These potentials reflected the "extraordinary integration of the genome." All organisms, she said, had an "overall pattern that’s built into the genome somewhere, so that it builds itself." Pattern is built into the genome, "If [the] pattern shifts the organism changes."

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p.122

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Asked in 1980 whether her races-of-maize shed light on evolution, McClintock replied, "Yes. Macroevolution undoubtedly." Since at least 1951, she had agreed with Goldschmidt’s thinking that chromosomes, rather than genes, with a proper unit of heredity She concluded, "The main changes in evolution are regulatory. They have to be"

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At the level of genome, she reasoned speciation could be structurally related to metamorphosis . If so, then, in theory, all organisms could be derived from a single set of genes.

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p.224

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[McClintock said:]

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"I believe there is little reason to question the presence of innate systems that are able to restructure the genome. It is now necessary to learn of these systems and determine why many of them are quiescent and remains so over very long periods of time only to be triggered into action by forms of stress."

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p.224

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These ideas of restructuring and reorganizing the genome brought her to the final question of her career, concerning the seats of the control. What "told" the controlling elements when the where [ and how] to act? What guided genome restructuring and reorganization? It was on this subject, the source of control that McClintock sounds most mystical. The organism themed to have knowledge of every cell, where it belongs [and acts] in the system [of an organism].

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Comfort, p. 152, says McClintock is "said to have told friends not to dismiss Velikovsky so quickly that there might be a grain of truth in his work".

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Evolution and the Problem of Natural Evil
Michael Anthony Cory,
(Landham, MD/Oxford, UK 2000)

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p. 18

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In the 1930s, the concept demonstrated that stress can induce transposons [jumping genes] activity within the genome But if stress can induce transposon activity, and if transposon activity can reorganize the entire genome, then it follows that stress can reorganize genomic reorganization. Going one step further, if genomic reorganization can result in the spontaneous production of new characters and new species, then it follows that external stress must also be potentially capable of inducing major changes in the evolutionary descent of organisms On this view, the genome is so ingenious and versatile, that it can respond to stress by involving itself into a plethora of new forms and structures

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In other words, the genome seems to possess within itself [the ability] to produce many of the relevant variations in any given species, long before any significant environmental contact has been made [that induces stress]. Such as a prori adaptive capacity, only seems to make sense if it were programmed into the genome from the very start of the evolutionary process.

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New Scientist (October 13, 1983)
"How Restless DNA was Tamed"
Jeremy Cherfas and Steve Connor
p.78

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Today, students of biochemistry take for granted the existence of different types of genesthose that produce proteins and others that regulate the production of proteins. But in the 1940s when Barbara McClintock presented evidence suggesting the evidence of controlling elements in addition to structural genes she was ignored and even ridiculed.

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While she was mapping the first controlling element, McClintock made the discovery that is now recognized by the Nobel Committee. She found that the controlling element shifted from one generation to the next. And, when it moved, it brought a different structural gene under its control

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This concept of gene regulation was entirely new to geneticists, and at the time she presented it, she was virtually ignored. John Finchman, Professor of Genetics at the University of Edinburgh, says there were two reasons for the muted response. She went against the accepted doctrine of the time (that chromosomes [over time were largely] stable) and presented the complicated evidence too rapidly for her peers to absorb.[33]

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One has to wonder if there is some sort of genetic expression and control that isn't understood, and which could mask lots of potential morphological and anatomical changes (possibly happening in a single generation), which were already , in some way, present in the genetic code. Franoise Jacob and Jacques Monad said the "fundamental problem with chemical physiology and embryology to understand why tissue cells do not all express, all the time, the potentialities inherent in their genome". Embryology shows the greatly different morphological expressions present in the entire genetic load.Could a rabbit like creature have once lived on an isolated island in the Cambrian times?With hair?(It , of course, would not be a mammal.)Genetic quiescence means what?McClintock said:"I believe there is little reason to question the presence of innate systems that are able to restructure the genome. It is now necessary to learn of these systems and determine why many of them are quiescent and remains so over very long periods of time only to be triggered into action by forms of stress.""Quiescent" features?Explain what that means.Edited by LamarkNewAge, : No reason given.Edited by LamarkNewAge, : No reason given.

Are you loaded?

You can keep on making jokes, but the biggest joke is the assumption, by posters in this thread, that there is some large Cambrian land-strata field that has been looked at and dug excavated.Most (almost all) of the land has been crushed by plate techtonics. Even the bulk of the Cambrian ocean strata has been crushed and lost.I made a minor post (without much commentary to clarify) about Cambrian genetic controls possibly allowing for the creation of a morphological rabbit-like creature possible.You then complained that it was off topic.(Posters here were saying that land "plants" of any sort weren't present ANYWHERE, and other arguments that can only be described as an "argument from absence of evidence")Don't make fun of creationists when they ask about missing links, if the Cambrian situation is going to be treated, by posters here, like everything has been found that ever existed. It isn't even close to true.

Well, I think a larger and mistaken assumption is you assuming that we are assuming that. We are well aware that exposed strata deposited in many periods is rare. I figured it was going to get complicated and suggested starting a new topic. I said there were no land plants, and I based that on fossil evidence of the emergence of vascular plants at the beginning of the Silurian Period. Perhaps you missed the part where I posted a link to an article about all the new fossils being discovered Message 1?
I wasn't joking. You jumped around semi-coherently in Message 9 in way that reminded me of people who are high. What the hell does this even mean? The geological record shows rapid evolution of new species from the survivors after major extinction events. What is a vexing problem is why should there be intermediary links between present-day species? Are you saying that there are no transitional fossils? Or are you saying that there should be some kind of links between living species and that there should be some different link between fossil species? And you continue bouncing around until: That's why I asked if you are high.Edited by Tanypteryx, : No reason given.

My "main beef(s)" will narrow this discussion (which you said you didn't want to have anyway).Tanypteryx said:

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Well, I think a larger and mistaken assumption is you assuming that we are assuming that. We are well aware that exposed strata deposited in many periods is rare.

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I said there were no land plants, and I based that on fossil evidence of the emergence of vascular plants at the beginning of the Silurian Period.

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I was talking about cambrian land-strata, and emphasis on the LAND part.google search:cambriaN land-stratabrings up some hits.here is just one

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Cambrian Period - Cambrian rocks | Britannica.com
Cambrian Period - Cambrian rocks | Britannica
Few Cambrian rocks from land environments have been documented, and most of .... precision to correlate uppermost Precambrian and basal Cambrian strata.

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As for my LAND plant beef, there are molecular level studies avaliable in the literature.see Just a moment...

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The timescale of early land plant evolution
Jennifer L. Morris, Mark N. Puttick, James W. Clark, Dianne Edwards, Paul Kenrick, Silvia Pressel, Charles H. Wellman, Ziheng Yang, Harald Schneider, and Philip C. J. Donoghue
PNAS March 6, 2018 115 (10) E2274-E2283; published ahead of print February 20, 2018 Just a moment...
Edited by Peter R. Crane, Oak Spring Garden Foundation, Upperville, VA, and approved January 17, 2018 (received for review November 10, 2017)

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Significance
Establishing the timescale of early land plant evolution is essential to testing hypotheses on the coevolution of land plants and Earth’s System. Here, we establish a timescale for early land plant evolution that integrates over competing hypotheses on bryophyte−tracheophyte relationships. We estimate land plants to have emerged in a middle Cambrian—Early Ordovocian interval, and vascular plants to have emerged in the Late Ordovician−Silurian. This timescale implies an early establishment of terrestrial ecosystems by land plants that is in close accord with recent estimates for the origin of terrestrial animal lineages. Biogeochemical models that are constrained by the fossil record of early land plants, or attempt to explain their impact, must consider a much earlier, middle Cambrian—Early Ordovician, origin.

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Abstract
Establishing the timescale of early land plant evolution is essential for testing hypotheses on the coevolution of land plants and Earth’s System. The sparseness of early land plant megafossils and stratigraphic controls on their distribution make the fossil record an unreliable guide, leaving only the molecular clock. However, the application of molecular clock methodology is challenged by the current impasse in attempts to resolve the evolutionary relationships among the living bryophytes and tracheophytes. Here, we establish a timescale for early land plant evolution that integrates over topological uncertainty by exploring the impact of competing hypotheses on bryophyte−tracheophyte relationships, among other variables, on divergence time estimation. We codify 37 fossil calibrations for Viridiplantae following best practice. We apply these calibrations in a Bayesian relaxed molecular clock analysis of a phylogenomic dataset encompassing the diversity of Embryophyta and their relatives within Viridiplantae. Topology and dataset sizes have little impact on age estimates, with greater differences among alternative clock models and calibration strategies. For all analyses, a Cambrian origin of Embryophyta is recovered with highest probability. The estimated ages for crown tracheophytes range from Late Ordovician to late Silurian. This timescale implies an early establishment of terrestrial ecosystems by land plants that is in close accord with recent estimates for the origin of terrestrial animal lineages. Biogeochemical models that are constrained by the fossil record of early land plants, or attempt to explain their impact, must consider the implications of a much earlier, middle Cambrian—Early Ordovician, origin.

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Much later in article

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Dating Strategies.
Across all alternative dating strategies, the age estimate for crown Embryophyta ranges from 583.1 Ma to 470.0 Ma (Fig. 5 and Table 4), which is larger than the range across the different topologies (515.2 Ma to 473.5 Ma). The greatest variance is seen when the embryophyte constraint is removed, resulting in older age estimates in the hornworts—sister topology, with an age distribution that stretches into the Proterozoic (to the middle Ediacaran), compared with the bulk of the distributions that fall within the Cambrian for all other age estimates (Fig. 5).

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Here is wikipedia.Embryophyte - WikipediaI reject the idea that earlier periods lacked many of the things the incomplete fossil record might presently indicate.There could have been lots of evolutionary dead-end LAND islands in Cambrian times.And intelligent life, as well as plants themselves, could have colonized the islands.There could have been some interesting islands (of life) before extinctions.

ok. ok. Maybe even intelligent plants. ok.Edited by Tanypteryx, : spelling

You forget how to spell "ok"?