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Monday, October 27, 2008

Chris Nedin Enters the Blogosphere

 
Chris Nedin is an interrupted paleontologist who studied Ediacaran and Early Cambrian palaeontology, palaeoecology and taphonomy. He was one of the early regulars on the newsgroup talk.origins and he even came to a Howlerfest in Toronto a few years ago (1997).1 (Chris lives in Australia.)

Chris Nedin has now become a blogger. Visit Ediacaran and read his first posting: The Spandrels of San Marco and the Anomalocaris Paradigm. Here's a teaser ..

The Spandrels of San Marco and the Panglossian Paradigm is one of my favourite science papers. As someone who accepts natural selection as a powerful evolutionary mechanism, but who considers that there are other, equally, or perhaps more, powerful mechanism out there, such as genetic drift, this paper resonated a lot with me. To summarise the paper (if you haven’t read it, please do), not everything that happens in evolution occurs because it was selected for. Like spandrels, things can happen as a consequence of other events. To summarise the summary, sh*t happens.

Here I’d like to develop that theme using Anomalocarus.
Welcome to the blogosphere, Chris. With an opening like that, we expect big things in the future.


1. I still remember how excited he and Saint Andrew (Andrew MacRae) were when the curators at the Royal Ontario Museum pulled out their famous fossil of Anomalocarus to look at. Chris and Andrew, being paleontologists, were the only ones allowed to touch it. Chris was also thrilled to see the trilobites with bite marks. Read his posting to see why.

2 comments :

James Goetz said...

Larry,

Thank you for turning me on to Chris Nedin. Nedin has great stuff on his new blog and also his old tripod page. Check out this quote by Nedin (http://members.tripod.com/~Cambrian/Creation-evolution),

"I accept that science in general and evolution in particular makes no judgement as to the existence of God. There is no conflict between evolution and God. There is no conflict between evolution and the Bible."

Larry Moran said...

James Goetz says,

Nedin has great stuff on his new blog and also his old tripod page.

I've known Chris for many years.

He's a great guy but he's not right about everything. :-)