Wednesday, February 07, 2007

Burgess Shale & Hox genes


I was looking for stuff to post about the Burgess Shale because it's cool and Bayman at one point was going on about the Cambrian explosion being problematic. The burgess shale is a site in British Columbia containing many fossils from this evolutionary explosion of diversity.
However I found another blog entry at The Voltage Gate that basically kicks ass on how much effort I was going to put in. Check out this awesome blog entry on the Burgess Shale at The Voltage Gate. I was hoping to be able to find some more information on how the explosion might relate to the evolution of Hox genes, that is the genes that are largely responsible for body plan, but I was not very successful. Luckily first hit on Google I got was a link to an Intelligent Design quiz on the Cambrian explosion. I did find a couple of reviews that summerize research into Hox gene evolution that indicate Hox gene diversity predated the Cambrian explosion. I totally don't get it.


1 comments:

Bayman said...

What a gong show...upside down fossils? What's the point even arguing about our ability to reverse-extrapolate events that happened 6 BILLION years ago based on what the Earth/fossil record happens to look like now...when we don't even know for sure which fossils are what...this book looks cool though...maybe I will add it to the read list.