Mammalian vertebral columns may reflect pace of evolution
How did simple, single-celled microorganisms become complex schools of fish and Brazilian monkeys — and us? It’s widely believed that the process of evolution always took place over eons, with random advantageous variations eventually becoming incremental shifts toward greater complexity. But that might not be the case. For Stephanie E. Pierce Thomas D. Cabot Associate Professor of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology and curator of vertebrate paleontology in the Museum of Comparative Zoology, and research associate Katrina Jones, clues can be found in the backbone, or more specifically, the evolution of the astoundingly intricate mammalian vertebral column. The researchers recently published a paper in Nature Communications that tests seven hypotheses of how that may have taken place. “This is a fundamental paper on understanding how this complex feature in mammals evolved, but it is also a great model system for understanding the evolution of complexity more generally,” Pierce said. “You go back into...