News for hackers. Stuff that matters.
Re:Massive animal species discovered in half-billion-year-ol... by thangalin on Wednesday September 08, 2021 @07:37PM (#28464377)
Cambrian Explosion is a bit of a misnomer because it leads people to think it was unique with respect to evolutionary processes. There is a push to call it the Cambrian Radiation [0]. Throughout complex life's time on Earth there have been multiple periods of rapid evolutionary development similar to the Cambrian. A blurb about the Cambrian Radiation appears in my coffee table picture book [1].

[0]: https://impacts.to/bibliography.pdf#page=41

[1]: https://impacts.to/downloads/lowres/impacts.pdf#page=15

Re:Massive animal species discovered in half-billion-year-ol... by mkl on Wednesday September 08, 2021 @08:35PM (#28464796)
"Radiation" sounds more unique than "explosion" to me (not an evolutionary biologist). It sounds like it means there was some unusual atomic radiation causing mutations at that time, so I think it will lead to more misunderstanding by laypeople rather than less. Why did they decide not to have multiple "explosions"?

Your book looks really interesting!

Re:Massive animal species discovered in half-billion-year-ol... by adrian_b on Thursday September 09, 2021 @12:13AM (#28466123)
"Radiation" is meant to suggest that the evolution advanced in many very different directions, like the rays that diverge from a point.

Such "radiations" have happened every time when there was little competition either because a new place or environment was invaded or because a catastrophe had eliminated the former incumbents.

The result of evolution "radiations" was that some group of animals that previously had been more or less uniform because they were adapted to a certain niche, after the "radiation" event became diversified in a large number of groups adapted to very different conditions of life and having much less resemblance between themselves than before.

Re:Massive animal species discovered in half-billion-year-ol... by mkl on Thursday September 09, 2021 @03:05AM (#28467093)
Yes I understand what it means, but the word "radiation" has other much more well-known meanings, one of which directly connects to having more mutations than usual, so it's bound to be misunderstood.
Re:Massive animal species discovered in half-billion-year-ol... by adrian_b on Thursday September 09, 2021 @04:14AM (#28467461)
You are right about the risk of misunderstanding the word "radiation".

However, the same risk applies to "explosion".

It is probably better to not use metaphors like "radiation" or "explosion", but to just say something like "diversification event".

However, "radiation" already has a long history of being used in the biological literature with this particular meaning, of divergent evolution, so for those familiar with the jargon, it seems an appropriate choice, even if it might not be the best word to use in something intended for the general public.

The "radiation" events are not events when the rate of mutations was higher (even if it is likely that the mutation rate during Cambrian was a little higher than today, due to higher ambient radioactivity because less of the primordial radioactive nuclides had already decayed by then).

The "radiation" events were events where a much larger proportion of mutants survived enough to have descendants, because of less competition that would have otherwise eliminated them.

This allowed a chain of neutral or bad mutations to lead eventually to improved organisms for certain conditions of life, while in the times of high competition it would have been impossible to escape local optima.

So while the rate of "raw" mutations was about the same as in other times, the rate of successful mutations, that persisted in the DNA of the descendants, was higher.

Re:Massive animal species discovered in half-billion-year-ol... by ASalazarMX on Thursday September 09, 2021 @11:28AM (#28470751)
Maybe Cambrian diversification/surge would be a more neutral name?
Re:Massive animal species discovered in half-billion-year-ol... by dotancohen on Thursday September 09, 2021 @01:46AM (#28466689)
This book looks fantastic - just perfect to capture the interest of the layman. If it ever get translated to my language it is going on my coffee table as well.

Did you coin the term Cambrian Radiation? Though I agree that the term Cambrian Explosion may mislead, I fear that the term Cambrian Radiation might confuse. If a new term is to be coined, wouldn't Cambrian Diversification be an obvious choice?

Re:Massive animal species discovered in half-billion-year-ol... by thangalin on Thursday September 09, 2021 @02:55PM (#28473243)
A printed version costs about $150 to produce, which includes $15 that goes to the illustrators. Translating to other languages would be a technical challenge. I didn't coin the term Cambrian Radiation; you can find the phrase referenced by biologists many times throughout the book's bibliography:

https://impacts.to/bibliography.pdf

Re:Massive animal species discovered in half-billion-year-ol... by dotancohen on Saturday September 11, 2021 @11:19AM (#28492686)
I see, thank you for the details.
Re:Massive animal species discovered in half-billion-year-ol... by inkyoto on Thursday September 09, 2021 @06:19AM (#28468145)
I fear that the term Cambrian Radiation might confuse

I have surmised the OP actually meant Cambrian Radiance, not radiation. Autocomplete might have been complicit.

Re:Massive animal species discovered in half-billion-year-ol... by thangalin on Thursday September 09, 2021 @02:52PM (#28473208)
Search for "radiation" and "radiance" in the book's bibliography:

https://impacts.to/bibliography.pdf

Re:Massive animal species discovered in half-billion-year-ol... by zeven7 on Thursday September 09, 2021 @09:09AM (#28469237)
Radiance sounds so much better than radiation