OEB Seminar Series: Javier Ortega-Hernández
Date and Time
Location
Javier Ortega-Hernández
Associate Professor of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology
Curator of Invertebrate Paleontology in the Museum of Comparative Zoology
Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology
Harvard University
Exceptional insights into the origin of the Phanerozoic marine biosphere
Abstract: Animals are key components of modern ecosystems and deeply influence the world around us. The early history of animals was fundamentally shaped by the Cambrian Explosion roughly 540 million years ago, a pivotal evolutionary event during which all major lineages diversified over a geologically short timeframe. This burst of innovation produced the basic body plans that persist today, including well-known groups such as the arthropods (animals with jointed exoskeletons) and the chordates (animals with a dorsal nerve cord). Alongside these recognizable forms, Cambrian oceans also hosted diverse but unfamiliar organisms whose body organization does not fit easily within modern biological categories. The 1989 New York Times bestseller Wonderful Life: The Burgess Shale and the Nature of History brought these so-called “weird wonders” to widespread public attention and popularized the view that the Cambrian Explosion was a period of extraordinary evolutionary experimentation that produced many bizarre but ultimately unsuccessful creatures. However, the emphasis on the differences between Cambrian and modern organisms and ecosystems obscures the deeper evolutionary significance of this world-changing event. The Cambrian Explosion was not just an episode of fleeting novelty, but the turning point during which the architecture of complex animal life and the foundations of modern marine ecosystems were first established. In this talk we will explore how some of the earliest animals preserved in the fossil record inform the origin of the modern biosphere as we know it, both in terms of its biodiversity composition and the early establishment of ecological laws that are still in effect to this day.