Dr. Marc Laflamme, Professor, University of Toronto Mississauga Complexity in the oldest animal communities My research focuses on the Ediacaran Period (635-538 Ma), which represents a pivotal time in Earth history, marked by the transition from single-celled organisms into complex multicellular animals. My interests lie in the natural history and functional morphology of the Ediacara biota, a group of soft-bodied organisms whose affinities are fiercely debated, and whose disappearance from the fossil record prior to the Cambrian explosion of animals is equally perplexing. The geobiological context in which the first animals evolved (and in which the Ediacara biota disappeared) thus represents one of the most crucial transitions in the history of life, incorporating Earth’s first major biotic crisis, as well as its most dramatic evolutionary radiation. I hope to showcase how innovative computational approaches to investigating fossil morphology has led to the discovery of some of the earliest evidence for facilitation and Ediacaran nurseries, while dedicated studies into the decay of soft-tissues has led to novel conclusions surrounding biases in the fossil record of early life.
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