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Index
Cover
Title Page
Dedication
Contents
Preface and Acknowledgments
Chapter I. The Iconography of an Expectation
A Prologue in Pictures
The Ladder and the Cone: Iconographies of Progress
Replaying Life’s Tape: the Crucial experiment
Inset: The Meanings of Diversity and Disparity
Chapter II. A Background for the Burgess Shale
Life Before the Burgess: the Cambrian Explosion and the Origin of Animals
Life After the Burgess: Soft-Bodied Faunas as Windows into the Past
The Setting of the Burgess Shale
Where
Why: The Means of Preservation
Who, When: the History of Discovery
Chapter III. Reconstruction of the Burgess Shale: Toward a New View of Life
A Quiet Revolution
A Methodology of Research
The Chronology of a Transformation
Inset: Taxonomy and the Status of Phyla
Inset: The Classification and Anatomy of Arthropods
The Burgess Drama
Act 1. Marrella and Yohoia: The Dawning and Consolidation of Suspicion, 1971-1974
The Conceptual World That Whittington Faced
Marrella: First Doubts
Yohoia: A Suspicion Grows
Act 2. A New View Takes Hold: Homage to Opabinia, 1975
Act 3. The Revision Expands: The Success of a Research Team, 1975-1978
Setting a Strategy for a Generalization
Mentors and Students
Conway Morris’s Field Season in Walcott’s Cabinets: A Hint Becomes a Generality, and the Transformation Solidifies
Derek Briggs and Bivalved Arthropods: The Not-So-Flashy but Just-As-Necessary Final Piece
Act 4. Completion and Codification of an Argument: Naraoia and Aysheaia, 1977-1978
Act 5. The Maturation of a Research Program: Life after Aysheaia, 1979-Doomsday (There Are No Final Answers)
The Ongoing Saga of Burgess Arthropods
Orphans and Specialists
A Present from Santa Claws
Continuing the March of Weird Wonders
Wiwaxia
Anomalocaris
Coda
Summary Statement on the Bestiary of the Burgess Shale
Disparity Followed by Decimation: a General Statement
Assessment of Genealogical Relationships for Burgess Organisms
The Burgess Shale as a Cambrian Generality
Predators and Prey: the Functional World of Burgess Arthropods
The Ecology of the Burgess Fauna
The Burgess as an Early World-Wide Fauna
The Two Great Problems of the Burgess Shale
The Origin of the Burgess Fauna
The Decimation of the Burgess Fauna
Chapter IV. Walcott’s Vision and the Nature of History
The Basis for Walcott’s Allegiance to the Cone of Diversity
A Biographical Note
The Mundane Reason for Walcott’s Failure
The Deeper Rationale for Walcott’s Shoehorn
Walcott’s Persona
Walcott’s General View of Life’s History and Evolution
The Burgess Shoehorn and Walcott’s Struggle with the Cambrian Explosion
The Burgess Shale and the Nature of History
Inset: A Plea for the High Status of Natural History 280
Chapter V. Possible Worlds: The Power of “Just History”
A Story of Alternatives
General Patterns that Illustrate Contingency
The Burgess Pattern of Maximal Initial Proliferation
Mass Extinction
Seven Possible Worlds
Evolution of the Eukaryotic Cell
The First Fauna of Multicellular Animals
The First Fauna of the Cambrian Explosion
The Subsequent Cambrian Origin of the Modern Fauna
The Origin of Terrestrial Vertebrates
Passing the Torch to Mammals
The Origin of Homo Sapiens
An Epilogue on Pikaia
Bibliography
Credits
Index
Other Titles By Stephen Jay Gould
Copyright
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