Wonderful Life: The Burgess Shale and the Nature of History (60 page)

The Western sky is all aflame. The scattered banks of clouds and wavy cirrus have caught the warring splendor, and shine with orange and crimson. Broad slant beams of yellow light, shot through the glory-rifts, fall on turret and tower, on pinnacled crest and wending ledge, suffusing through with a radiance less fulsome, but akin to that which flames in western clouds. The summit band is brilliant yellow, the next below is pale rose. But the grand expanse within is deep, luminous, resplendid [sic] red. The climax has now come; the blaze of sunlight poured over an illimitable surface of glowing red is flung back into the gulf, and, commingling with the blue haze, turns it into a sea of purple of most imperial hue. However vast the magnitudes, however majestic the forms or sumptuous the decoration, it is in these kingly colors that the highest glory of the Grand Canyon is revealed.

*
Our agreement on the theme, if not the terminology, provides hope that even the most implacable differences in style and morality may find a common meeting ground on this most important of intellectual turfs—for Steve is the most fanatical Red Sox booster in New England, while my heart remains with the Yankees.

*
“Holotype” is taxonomic jargon for the specimen designated to bear the name of a species. Holotypes are chosen because concepts of the species may change later and biologists must have a criterion for assigning the original name. (If, for example, later taxonomists decide that two species were mistakenly mixed together in the first description, the original name will go to the group including the holotype specimen.)

*
Mass extinctions do not negate the principle of natural selection, for environments can change too fast and too profoundly for organic response; but coordinated dyings do run counter to Darwin’s preference for seeing the large in the small, and for viewing organic competition, group by separate group, as the primary source of life’s overall pattern.

*
The repetition of the Burgess pattern by conventional groups with hard parts is very fortunate and favorable for testing the main issue presented by the phenomenon of decimation: Do losers disappear by inferiority in competition, or by lottery? Unfortunately, we can learn little about this key question from the Burgess Shale itself, for this soft-bodied fauna is only a spot in time, and we have virtually no evidence about the pattern of later decimation. (One Devonian arthropod,
Mimetaster
from the Hunsrückschiefer, is probably a surviving relative of
Marrella;
most other Burgess anatomies disappear without issue, and we have no evidence at all for how or when.) But patterns of extinction in groups with hard parts can be traced. Paradoxically, therefore, the best and most operational way to test for sources of decimation in the Burgess would be to study the parallel and tractable situation in echinoderms. My first question: do echinoderm “failures” tend to disappear at full abundance during mass extinctions, or to peter out gradually at different uncoordinated times? The former situation would be strong evidence for a substantial component of lottery in decimation. We do not know the answer to this question, but the solution is obtainable in principle.

*
Geographic range is a property of populations, not of individual clams or snails. Hence, even if survival is correlated with geographic range, a species’fate may be random with respect to the anatomical virtues of its individuals.

Ever Since Darwin: Reflections in Natural History

The Panda’s Thumb: More Reflections in Natural History
Hen’s Teeth and Horse’s Toes: Further Reflections in Natural History
The Flamingo’s Smile: Reflections in Natural History
Finders, Keepers: Eight Collectors
(with R. W. Purcell) An
Urchin in the Storm: Essays about Books and Ideas
Bully for Brontosaurus: Reflections in Natural History
Eight Little Piggies: Reflections in Natural History
The Mismeasure of Man

The Book of Life
(editor)

Illuminations
(with R. W. Purcell)

Triumph and Tragedy in Mudville: My Lifelong Passion for Baseball

OTHER TITLES BY STEPHEN JAY GOULD

Ontogeny and Phylogeny
Time’s Arrow, Time’s Cycle: Myth and Metaphor in the Discovery of Geological Time
Dinosaur in a Haystack: Reflections in Natural History
Full House: The Spread of Excellence from Plato to Darwin
Questioning the Millennium: A Rationalist’s Guide to a Precisely
Arbitrary Countdown

Leonardo’s Mountain of Clams and the Diet of Worms:

Essays on Natural History

Rock of Ages: Science and Religion in the Fullness of Life
The Lying Stones of Marrakech: Penultimate Reflections
in Natural History

Crossing Over: Where Art and Science Meet
(with R. W. Purcell)
The Structure of Evolutionary Theory

I Have Landed: The End of a Beginning in Evolutionary History

Copyright © 1989 by Stephen Jay Gould All rights reserved

First published as a Norton paperback 1990; reissued 2007

“Design” copyright 1936 by Robert Frost and renewed 1964 by Lesley Frost Ballantine. Reprinted from
The Poetry of Robert Frost
, edited by Edward Connery Lathem, by permission of Henry Holt and Company, Inc.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Gould, Stephen Jay.

Wonderful life: the Burgess Shale and the nature of history / Stephen Jay Gould.

p. cm. Bibliography: p. Includes index.

1. Evolution–History. 2. Invertebrates, Fossil. 3. Paleontology–Cambrian. 4. Paleontology–British Columbia–Yoho National Park (B.C.) I. Title.

QE770.G67 1989

560’.9–dc l988–37469

ISBN 978-0-393-30700-9

ISBN 978-0-393-24520-2 (e-book) W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.

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