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2017 SSM Darwin Week – College of Charleston: “Darwin’s Dilemma”

February 13, 2017 @ 5:00 pm - 6:00 pm

Free

Sigma Xi Distinguished Lecture:
Darwin’s Dilemma

Phil Manning
College of Charleston
Mace Brown Museum of Natural History

http://geology.cofc.edu/about/faculty-and-staff/manning-phillip.php

In 2009 the bicentenary of Darwin’s birth and the 150th anniversary of the publication of Origin of Species was globally celebrated. These milestones reminded us of aspects of Darwin’s work that, despite the passage of time, are yet in need of investigation. “Darwin’s Dilemma” refers to the evolutionary paradox of the sudden appearance of complex life in sedimentary rocks at the base of the Cambrian – the Cambrian Explosion, with apparently no evidence of earlier animals when Charles Darwin wrote ‘On the Origin of the Species’. Darwin considered this a major problem for his theory of evolution by natural selection. Darwin devoted much of a chapter within his famous book to his inability to point to any evidence for life in the long Dark-Age of Precambrian rocks. ‘”There is another and allied difficulty, which is much graver. I allude to the manner in which the numbers of species of the same group suddenly appear in the lowest known fossiliferous rocks?” (Darwin, 1859; p. 306). He then went so far as to say: “The case at present must remain inexplicable; and may be truly urged as a valid argument against my views here entertained.” This was Darwin’s Dilemma. Darwin also saw a glimpse of light at the end of the tunnel, which was to turn into an ample prophecy: “Traces of life have been detected in the Longmynd beds beneath the primordial [Cambrian] zone.” (Darwin 1859, p. 307). We now know that such ‘traces of life’ include the Ediacaran fauna that can be traced from Longmynd and Charnwood in England, to Newfoundland, Canada where some of the very best and oldest examples of this fauna have been found, at Mistaken Point in rocks of latest Precambrian (Ediacaran) age. The discovery of ancient complex life that predates the Cambrian Explosion has started to answer many of the questions that Darwin strove to answer. These fossil ‘organisms’ bear witness to the previously hidden evolutionary history of early life that we might wryly call ‘Darwin’s deliverance’. However, questions as to the identity, biology and ecology of these ancient, Ediacaran lifeforms continues to perplex science in the 21st Century. A significant breakthrough is now occurring in this most ancient of these large complex lifeforms using techniques borrowed from the world of particle and accelerator physics. The 565 million year old fossils of Mistaken Point from the Atlantic coast of Newfoundland in Canada might finally offer new evidence that might enable us to interpret the oldest and largest complex life on the planet.

Details

Date:
February 13, 2017
Time:
5:00 pm - 6:00 pm
Cost:
Free
Website:
http://ssm.cofc.edu/additional-programs/darwin-week/events.php

Venue

School of Science and Mathematics Auditorium
202 Calhoun St
Charleston, SC 29401 United States