A Fairly Slow Explosion (Soup to Us, Part 2)
from Soup to Us Hosted by Boring History Podcast
The Cambrian begins with a burrow. The burrow then turns up below the start of the Cambrian. The paperwork is already out of order. Part 2 of Soup to Us is about the Cambrian explosion, and how explosive it really was. First, the sea before the bang: Mistaken Point, Dickinsonia and its chemical clue, Kimberella, and things already digging. Then the record itself: small shells, trilobites, Chengjiang, Walcott and the Burgess Shale, and Hallucigenia, which had to be turned over before it made sense. Then how sudden it was, which is about twenty million years, with edges, and what molecular clocks can and cannot say. Last, the proposed causes, from oxygen and predators to eyes and the gene networks that build bodies, and the argument between Stephen Meyer and Charles Marshall over whether rewiring those networks is enough. Full script: https://boringhistorypodcast.com/episodes/soup-to-us-part-2/
Embed this episode
No transcript yet.