Simon Conway Morris - Biography - Work

Work

Conway Morris is based in the Department of Earth Sciences at the University of Cambridge and is best known for his work on the Cambrian “explosion”, especially in terms of his study of the famous Burgess Shale fossil fauna and similar deposits in China and Greenland. In addition to working in these countries he has undertaken research in Australia, Canada, Mongolia and the United States. His studies on the Burgess Shale-type faunas, as well as the early evolution of skeletons, has encompassed a wide variety of groups, ranging from ctenophores to the earliest vertebrates. His thinking on the significance of the Burgess Shale has evolved and his current interest in evolutionary convergence and its wider significance — the topic of his 2007 Gifford Lectures - was in part spurred by Stephen Jay Gould’s arguments for the importance of contingency in the history of life.

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