It ISN’t EASY to bee a fossil. te of nearly all living anisms—over 99.9pert of to post doo noto be put to use in some otem. t’s just t is. Even if you make it into t, t don’t get devoured, the ces of being fossilized are very small.

        In order to bee a fossil, several t , you must die in tplace. Only about 15 pert of rocks    preserve fossils, so it’s no good keeling over on afuture site of granite. In practical terms t bee buried in sediment,    mud, or depose    exposure to oxygeting ts bones and s (and very occasionally softer parts) to bereplaced by dissolved minerals, creating a petrified copy of ts in    someain aifiable s aboveall, after tens of millions or per must befound and reized as someth keeping.

        Only about one bone in a billion, it is t, ever bees fossilized. If t is so, itmeans t te fossil legacy of all today—t’s 270 millionpeople    fifty bones, one quarter of a pleteskeleton. t’s not to say of course t any of tually be found. Bearing inmind t tly over 3.6 million squaremiles, little of    of    imated t less tent into t in itself is a stunningly infinitesimalproportion.    timate t ture in its time and Ricatement (intin ) t ture in treduces tion to just one in 120,000. Eit sampling of all t Earth has spawned.

        Moreover, t land animals, of course, don’tdie in sediments. ten or left to rot or onotly is almost absurdly biased in favor of marine creatures.

        About 95 pert of all t once lived under er,mostly in shallow seas.

        I mention all to explain o tural oryMuseum in London to meet a cologist namedRicey.

        Fortey kno about an a.    of animate creation.

        But    love is a type of marine creature called trilobites t oeemed in Ordoviseas but    existed for a long time except in fossilized form. All ss, or lobes—ail, tey found    . David’s Bay in ales. he was hookedfor life.

        ook me to a gallery of tall metal cupboards. Eay trilobites—ty thousand spes in all.

        “It seems like a big number,”    you o remember t millions uponmillions of trilobites lived for millions upon millions of years in a seas, so tyt a    of tial spes. Finding aplete trilobite fossil is still a big moment for a paleontologist.”

        trilobites first appeared—fully formed, seemingly from noart of t outburst of plex life popularly kno deal else, in t and still mysteriousPermiain 300,000 or so turies later. As inct creatures, tural temptation tard t in fact t successfulanimals ever to live. tory’s great survivors. ey points out,    as long.

        itime at trilobites proliferated prodigiously. Most remainedsmall, about tles, but some greo be as big as platters. Altoget least five ty turn upall time. Fortey ly been at a feren Souty in Argentina. “S eresting trilobites t    deal else. Sies to studyto look for more. s of till unexplored.”

        “In terms of trilobites?”

        “No, in terms of everything.”

        t teentury, trilobites    t reason ed and studied. teryabout tey says, it    be startling to go tot formation of rocks and to    all, and taspis or Elenellus as big as a crab o y ures ems, probingantennae, “a brain of sorts,” in Fortey’s ra eyes ever seen. Made ofcalcite rods, tuff t forms limestoituted t visual systemskno trilobites didn’t sist of just ouresome speciesbut dozens, and didn’t appear in one or tions but all over. Maury saation of Darionary ideals. If evolution proceeded slo fortures? t is, .

        And so matters seemed destio remain forever until one day in 1909, tietion of Darologist le alade araordinary find in the adianRockies.

        alcott ie means,ill t . As a boy alcott discovered t icularlytrilobites, and built up a colle of suffit distin t it    $70,000 in today’s money.

        Altion and augtbecame a leading auty on trilobites and    person to establis trilobites includes modern is and crustas.

        In 1879 ook a job as a field researced States GeologicalSurvey and served in t een years o be its ed secretary of titution, ive obligations, io do fieldoe prolifically. “o Fortey. Not ially, or of tional Advisory ittee for Aeronautics, ional Aeronautid Space Agency, or NASA, and tly be sidered the space age.

        But e but lucky find in Britistle toe summer of 1909. tomary version of toryis t alcott, apanied by ain trail be called tones. Dismountingto assist t discovered t turned a slab of s tained fossilcrustas of an especially a and unusual type. Snoer es earlyto t linger, but t year at t opportunityalcott returo t. trag te of t to ain’s summit. t above sea level, crop, about ty block, taining an unrivaled array of fossils from soo t , tology. tcrop becamek provided “our sole vista upon tionof modern life in all its fullness,” as te Stephen Jay Gould recorded in his popular bookonderful Life .

        Gould, ever scrupulous, discovered from reading alcott’s diaries t tory of to    embroidered—alakes ion of a slipping    ting t it raordinary find.

        It is almost impossible for us ed to a breezy feoappreciate e in time from us tburst o t at te of one year per sed, it ake you about o reacime of d a little over to get back to the beginnings of human life.

        But it ake you ty years to reac remely long time ago, and t place.

        For o    attop of a mountain but at t of one. Specifically it tom of a steep cliff. t time teemed    normally t norecord because t-bodied and decayed upon dying. But at Burgess tures beloombed in a mudslide, ures preserved in ail.

        In annual summer trips from 1910 to 1925 (by t excavated tens of t al Gerap back toason for furtudy. In boty tion . Some ing of 140 species by one t. “ty in anatomical designs never again equaled, and notmatcoday by all tures in te.

        Unfortunately, acc to Gould, alcott failed to dis t    tory,” Gould e in anotLittle Piggies, “alcott to misinterpret t fossils in tpossible ral to today’s o appreciate tiness. “Under sucerpretation,” Gould sigy and moved inexorably,predictably ono more aer.”

        alcott died in 1927 and tten. For nearly ury tayed s aural ory inason, seldom sulted and never questioe student fromCambridge Uy named Simon    to tion. onis    tted in ings. In taxonomy tegory t describes ter draies—all amazingly and unatably unreized by them.

        ittington, and felloe student Derek Briggs,    t several years making a systematic revision of tire colle, andking out oing monograper anotures employed body plans t    simply unlike anyt . One, Opabinia,    oia, looked almost ically like apineapple slice. A tly tottered about on roilt-like legs, and    t y in tiont at one point upon opening a er,“O another phylum.”

        team’s revisions s time of unparalleledinnovation and experimentation in body designs. For almost four billion years life    aable ambitions in tion of plexity, and t five or ten million years, it ed all till ioday. Name a creature, from a ode o Cameron Diaz, aure first created in ty.

        surprising,    t o make t, so to speak, a no desdants. Altogeto Gould, atleast fifteen and pery of to nnizedps to as many as os ever actually claimed.) “tory of life,” e Gould,“is a story of massive removal folloiation ocks, nottional tale of steadily increasing excellence, plexity, and diversity.”

        Evolutionary success, it appeared, tery.

        One creature tdid mao slip to ive spinal n, making it t knoorof all later vertebrates, including us.Pikaia    among to extin. Gould, in a famousquotation, leaves no doubt t unate fluke: “ind back tape of life to t it play again from aical startingpoint, and t anytelligence he replay.”

        Gould’s book ical acclaim and    ercialsuccess.     generally kno many stists didn’t agree    all, and t it o get very ugly. I of to do empers t ps.

        In fact, ed at least a    sooner. Nearly forty years after alade    in Australia, a young geologistnamed Reginald Sprigg found somets    as remarkable.

        In 1946 Sprigg ant gover geologist for tate of Soutraliao make a survey of abandoned mines in tbae to see if t migably reec studying surface rocks at all, still less fossils. But one day o put itmildly—to see t te fossils, rated t the dawn of visible life.

        Sprigg submitted a paper to Nature , but it urned doead at tannual meeting of tralian and Neion for t ofSce, but it failed to find favor ion’s s uitous inanic markings”—patterns made by ides, but not living beings.    yet entirely crusraveled to London aed o ternational Geological gress, but failed to exciteeiterest or belief. Finally, for    of a better outlet, ransas of ty of Soutralia. t    job andtook up oil exploration.

        Nine    years    later,    in    1957,    a    s trange fossil in it, similar toa modern sea pen aly like some    totell everyone about ever siur in to a paleontologist at tyof Leicester,    at once as Precambrian. Young Mason got ure ied as a precocious ill is in many books. the spe wasnamed in his honor Chamia masoni.

        today some of Sprigg’s inal Edia spes, alo time, be seen in a glass case in an upstairs room of tout and lovely Soutralian Museumin Adelaide, but t attract a great deal of attention. tely ets arerat and not terribly arresting to trained eye. tly small and disc-srailing ribbons. Fortey -bodiedoddities.”

        till very little agreement about old, no mouto take in and discivematerials, and no internal ans o process teysays, “most of t, like soft,structureless and inanimate flatfis t, tures ic, meaning t from tissue. ition of jellyfisoday are triploblastic.

        Some experts t animals at all, but more like plants or fungi. tins bet and animal are not als life fixed to a single spot and ing , a is ananimal. “o ts and animalsey. “t any rule t says you o bedemonstrably one or ther.”

        Nor is it agreed t tral to anytoday (except possibly some jellyfisies see t, a stab at plexity t didn’t take, possibly because tpeted by ticated animals of theCambrian period.

        “today,” Fortey ten. “t tointerpret as any kind of aors of o follow.”

        t ultimately t terribly important to t of lifeoies believe t termination at t all tures (except tain jellyfiso move on to t parted ’s    in any case.

        As for t at once people began to questionterpretations and, in particular, Gould’s interpretation of terpretations. “From t tists    t Steve Gould ed, s delivery,” Fortey e in Life. tis putting it mildly.

        “If only Stepes!” barked telegrap tdoerarytour-de-force,” but accused Gould of engaging in a “grandiloquent and near-disingenuous”

        misrepresentation of ts by suggesting t tuological unity. “t tag—t evolution marcoward a pinnacle suc been believed for 50 years,” Dawkinsfumed.

        A ly to which many general reviewers were drawn.

        One, ing in times Book Revie as a result ofGould’s book stists “ some preceptions t texamined feions. tantly or entically, accepting t of nature as a product of orderly development.”

        But t directed at Gould arose from t many of aken or carelessly inflated. riting in tion, DatackedGould’s assertions t “evolution in t kind of process fromtoday” and expressed exasperation at Gould’s repeated suggestions t “tionary ‘experiment,’ evolutionary ‘trial and error,’ evolutionary ‘false starts.’ .

        . . It ile time al body plans’ ed.

        Noion just tinkers    new species!”

        Noti there are no new body plans—is picked up, Dawkins says:

        “It is as t an oak tree and remarked,    it stra no major neo be at twig level.’ ”

        “It raime,” Fortey says no t somet    feelings really did runquite    I felt as if I ougo put a safety    on bef about t it did actually feel a bit like t.”

        Stra of all artled many in tological unity by rounding abruptly on Gouldin a book of ion. treated Gould “empt, evenloatey’s e later. “tion, unaory,    to (if not actuallysh) Gould’s.”

        ey about it,    range, quite srayal of tering. I could only assume t Simon , and I suppose tedbeing so irremediably associated    oget stuff about ‘o ted being famous for t.”

        to undergo a period of criticalreappraisal. Fortey and Derek Briggs—one of tipare terms, cladistisists anizing anisms on tures. Fortey gives as an examplet. If you sidered t’s large size andstriking trunk you mig it could tle in on iny, sniffings if you pared bot t ands built to muc Fortey is saying is tGould sa as strange and various as t first sigen ner trilobites,” Fortey says no is just t o getused to trilobites. Familiarity, you knoy.”

        t, I se, because of sloppiness or iion. Interpreting tions animals on ten distorted and fragmentary evidence isclearly a tricky business. Ed if you took selected species ofmodern is and preseyle fossils nobody    t are trumental in es, one in Greenland and onein Ctered finds, ional and ofteer spes.

        t is t to be not so different after all.

        turned out, ructed upside dos stilt-like legs ually spikes along its back. Peytoia, ture t looked like a pineapple slice,o be not a distinct creature but merely part of a larger animal called Anomalocaris.

        Many of to living p    t place.    to be related toOnycerpillar-like animals. Ot, says Fortey, “tively feare urn out to be just iing elaborations of ablise in range as a present daybarnacle, nor as grotesque as a queee.”

        So t so spectacular after all. teyten, “no less iing, or odd, just more explicable.” t a kind of youtionary equivalent, as it uds. Eventually ttled into a staid and stable middle age.

        But t still left tion of w of nowhere.

        Alas, it turns out t e so explosive as all t.

        t is no,     toosmall to see. Once again it rilobites t provided ticular t seeminglymystifying appearance of different types of trilobite in tered locations around t more or less time.

        On t, ts of fully formed but varied creatures o enburst, but in fact it did te.

        It is oo ure like a trilobite burst fortion—treally is a    to inct but clearly related, turning upsimultaneously in t as Cs t    of tory. tronger evideo    started t.

        And t found t is no, is t too tiny to be preserved. Says Fortey: “It isn’t necessary to be big to be a perfectlyfuning, plex anism. tiny artoday t    nofossil record.” es ttle copepod, ers in so turn vast areas of t our totalknos ary is a single spe found in t fossilized fish.

        “t’s t, probably ypes,” Fortey says. “And it could esly, so in t sense I suppose it    just as mammalsbided time for a il t fort, so too perriploblastsed in semimicroscopiity for t Edia anisms to ey: “e kno mammals increased in size quite dramatically after t—te abruptly I of course mean it in a geological sense.

        e’re still talking millions of years.”

        Ially, Reginald Sprigg did eventually get a measure of overdue credit. One of ter time, ing days er leaving geology ually retired to ae in ed a wildlife reserve. he died in 1994 a rich man.
请记住本书首发域名：966xs.com。966小说手机版阅读网址：wap.966xs.com