Simon Conway Morris

Simon Conway Morris (born November 6, 1951 in Carshalton , Surrey ; last name: Conway Morris ) is a British paleontologist . He became internationally known as the explorer of the fossils of Burgess slate .

life and work

Conway Morris studied geology at the University of Bristol with a bachelor's degree in 1972 and received his doctorate in 1975 with Harry Blackmore Whittington at Cambridge University . From 1975 to 1979 he was a Research Fellow at St. John's College in Cambridge and then a lecturer at the Open University in Cambridge and from 1991 a reader. In 1987 he became a Fellow of St. John's College. He has been Professor of Evolutionary Palaeobiology in the Department of Earth Sciences at Cambridge University since 1995.

In 1981 he was visiting scholar at the University of Calgary, 1988 visiting professor at the University of Kansas and 1992 Selby Fellow at the Australian Academy of Sciences.

In addition to the Burgess Shale, he examined fossils from the Cambrian (and the Cambrian Explosion worldwide. He also included molecular biology in paleontological research (molecular clocks, etc.).

With Jean-Bernard Caron, he described Metaspriggina walcotti from the Burgess Shale in 2008 (already found by Walcott but only examined in more detail by Morris), which they consider the oldest fish fossil with an age of 518 million years.

He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society . In 1987 he was awarded the Charles Doolittle Walcott Medal of the National Academy of Sciences and in 1998 the Lyell Medal of the Geological Society of London . In 1989 he received the Charles Schuchert Award . In 1996 he gave the Royal Institution's Christmas Lecture (The History in our Bones).

Conway Morris is the main proponent of the theory of convergence in evolution. After that, animals develop into similar forms in evolution, which assert themselves optimally in their ecological niche, regardless of their phylogenetic origin. In his view, even the development of life in the universe is severely restricted to forms similar to those on earth.

In 1975 he married Zoe Helen James, with whom he has two sons.

Fonts (selection)

A new metazoan from the Cambrian Burgess Shale of British Columbia. In: Palaeontology. Volume 20, 1977, pp. 623-640.
The Crucible of Creation: The Burgess Shale and the Rise of Animals. Oxford University Press, 1998.
Beyond chance. We humans in the lonely universe. Berlin University Press, 2008, ISBN 978-3-940432-07-0 (German version of: Life's Solution: Inevitable humans in a Lonely Universe. Cambridge University Press, 2003).
with KW Barthel, NHM Swinburne: Solnhofen. A study in mesozoic paleontology, Cambridge University Press 1990 (based on the German book by K. Werner Barthel 1978)
The question of metazoan monophyly and the fossil record, in Werner EG Müller, Molecular evolution: towards the origin of metazoa, Springer 1998, pp. 1-20
Editor: The Deep Structure of Biology. Is convergence sufficiently ubiquitous to give a directional signal?, Templeton Foundation Press 2008
Edited with JD George, R. Gibson, HM Platt: The origins and relationships of lower invertebrates, Clarendon Press 1985

literature

Alexander E. Gates: Earth Scientists from A to Z, Facts on File, 2003

Web links

Individual evidence

personal data
SURNAME	Conway Morris, Simon
BRIEF DESCRIPTION	British paleontologist
DATE OF BIRTH	November 6, 1951
PLACE OF BIRTH	Carshalton , Surrey

[1] The oldest fish in the world lived 500 million years ago, The Conversation, June 11, 2014

[2] Morris, Caron, A primitive fish from the Cambrian of North America, Nature, Letter, June 11, 2014