Before the Backbone: Views on the origin of the vertebrates

Front Cover
Springer Science & Business Media, Jul 27, 2007 - Science - 346 pages
We cannot catechise our stony ichthyolites, as did the necromantic lady of the Arabian Nights did the coloured fishes of the lake which had once been a city, when she touched their dead bodies with her wand, and they straightaway raised their heads and rephed to her queries. We would have many a question to ask them if we could - questions never to be solved. Hugh Miller, The Old Red Sandstone When I started this book in 1991, the subject of vertebrate origins was fusty and unfashionable. Early drafts for this preface read like an extend ed complaint at the lot of traditional morphologists, cast aside by the march of modern molecular biology. But no longer - this book should reach you at a time of renewed inter est in the origin of the vertebrates, our own particular corner of creation. For although the topic has excited interest for well over a century, molec ular biology has only lately achieved the maturity necessary to test its predictions. As a legitimate field of study, it is fashionable again.

From inside the book

Contents

The origins of vertebrates
84
Head to head
160
Jefferies Calcichordate Theory
201
Conclusions
287
References
305
Index
337
Copyright

Other editions - View all

Common terms and phrases

Popular passages

Page 160 - Fillet of a fenny snake, In the cauldron boil and bake ; Eye of newt and toe of frog, Wool of bat and tongue of dog...
Page 84 - My story being done, She gave me for my pains a world of sighs : She swore, in faith, 'twas strange, 'twas passing strange ; 'Twas pitiful, 'twas wondrous pitiful...
Page 88 - According to my opinion the proboscis of the Nemerteans, which arises as an invaginable structure (entirely derived, both phylo- and ontogenetically, from the epiblast), and which passes through a part of the cerebral ganglion, is homologous with the rudimentary organ which is found in the whole series of Vertebrates without exception — the hypophysis cerebri. The proboscidian sheath of the Nemerteans is comparable in situation (and development?) with the chorda dorsalis of Vertebrates.
Page 336 - PA (1993). Reversal of left-right asymmetry: A situs inversus mutation. Science 260, 679-682.
Page 309 - Peel, JS (1995) Articulated halkieriids from the Lower Cambrian of North Greenland and their role in early protostome evolution. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, B, 347, 305-358 Corbin, V, Michelson, AM, Abmayr, SM, Neel, V, Alcamo, E., Maniatis, T.
Page 317 - Graham, A., Heyman, I. and Lumsden, A. (1993). Even-numbered rhombomeres control the apoptotic elimination of neural crest cells from odd-numbered rhombomeres in the chick hindbrain. Development, 119, 233-245.
Page 309 - Molecular nature of Spemann's organizer: The role of the Xenopus homeobox gene goosecoid. Cell 67, 1111-1120.

Bibliographic information