Palaeontology and Evolutionary Developmental Biology: A Science of the Nineteenth and Twenty–first Centuries

摘要: A wind of change has swept through palaeontology in the past few decades. Contrast Sir Peter Medawar’s dismissive: ‘palaeontology is a particularly undemanding branch science’ (as recalled by John Maynard Smith Sabbagh 1999, p. 158) with ‘Palaeontology: grasping opportunities science twenty–first century’, title contribution to special issue Geobios Cambridge palaeontologist, Simon Conway Morris (1998a). The winds have come partly from palaeontologists seeking broaden impact their studies and biologists (neontologists) realizing contributions that can make disciplines. Consequently, impressions life preserved stone are coming alive. Fossils being described analyzed using new tools languages as static fossil record becomes transitions patterns be explained related biological, ecological, climatic tectonic changes. latest addition evolutionary developmental biology, or ‘evo–devo’, whose language provides basis upon which interpret anatomical change, both materially mechanistically. In this review I examine major made palaeontology, how been linked evolution embryology past, links evo–devo enlivened will continue enliven evo–devo. Closer between two fields should illuminate important unresolved issues origin metazoans (e.g. Why there conflict molecular clocks timing metazoan radiation; were Precambrian ancestors similar extant larvae miniature adults?) diversification How do constraints bias direction evolution; microevolutionary processes relate macroevolutionary changes?).