Dicho grupo de organismos ha sido nombrado, tras algunos debates, como la fauna de Ediacara, del período Ediacariense, en honor a algunos de los fósiles encontrados en unas montañas de Australia del mismo nombre. Bien es cierto que "fauna" es un término usado para denominar al conjunto de animales, y, como tales organismos eran aparentemente sésiles, y previos a la explosión de vida indiscutiblemente animada del Cámbrico, no es correcto clasificarlos como animales -aunque tampoco como plantas (flora).
El interés por los colonizadores biológicos que arriban a costas inhóspitas o extrañas del Profesor McMenamin no termina ahí. El pueblo Fenicio, que desarrolló la escritura alfabética y el comercio marítimo a gran escala y a grandes distancias ha sido también objeto privilegiado de su interés. Ha hipotetizado sobre la posible llegada a las costas americanas de sus sucesores del Oeste mediterráneo, los Cartagineses, al igual que ahora estudia las rutas seguidas por el cartaginés más eminente, Aníbal, en su paso por los Alpes a la conquista de Roma.
Las investigaciones del Profesor McMenamin son de amplio espectro, pero también de amplio calado. De hecho suscitan polémicas en el mundo de la ciencia, algo, por otra parte, necesario para el avance del conocimiento. Su simpatía hacia las ideas teleológicas del evolucionista y teólogo Teilhard de Chardin, le inclinan a denominar "tendencia natural" a lo que hoy en biología casi todos denominamos "selección natural". Y cree que el desarrollo de cerebros en fases tan tempranas de la evolución como el Ediacariense sostienen esta concepción teleológica.
1. Throughout the history of life, different filogenetic lines have reached similar solutions to the problems posed by their environments. This is called "convergent evolution", and is seen, for example, on the wings of bats and birds, or eyes of insects and mammals. You suggest, from your fossil discoveries, that something similar happens with brains. Could you tell us the evidence that led you to that conclusion?
The convergent evolution of brains is well established in the Animal Kingdom. Advanced brain function is well known in the dinosaur lineage (parrots and crows), mammals (primates and cetaceans) and molluscs (cephalopods). The question I posed in The Garden of Ediacara: Discovering the First Complex Life was: Did the vendobionts (non animal Ediacarans) start on the path to problem solving intelligence? Yes. Several of the vendobiont lineages developed head, of vendobiont rather than animal construction. Thus, the Ediacaran vendobionts and the Ediacaran animals were both on an evolutionary path to advanced brain function. The vendobionts became extinct, whereas the arthropods survived and went on to develop advanced behaviours, as seen in modern jumping spiders (Salticidae). Jumping spiders can approach and attack insect prey from behind by using a three-dimensional map that they construct in their brain.
2. From a world originally without nervous systems, what evolutionary pressures lead to the emergence and evolution of brains as complex as human's?
We would ordinarily think that the evolutionary pressures leading to the appearance of complex brains would be: avoiding danger, seeking food or energy sources, and enhancing reproductive success. In other words, organisms feel pressure to eat, survive, and reproduce. A better way to think about this is that the organisms themselves apply pressure to their environment, changing and modifying it as they expand their territory and their geochemical influence. Vladimir Vernadsky called this the pressure of life. Vernadsky compared the expansion of organisms to expansion of an ideal gas. Interestingly, all of these pressures can be experienced by and responded to by organisms that lack complex nervous systems. So, there must be many ways to respond to these evolutionary pressures. However, when Vernadskian biotic pressure was added to the original evolutionary pressures, the environment and the ecology experienced by organisms became more complex, and the behavioural flexibility afforded by a brain became highly advantageous. This is why brains do not appear until relatively late in earth history. Brains are a symptom of a more complex ecology.
3. Evolution is supposedly a process guided by chance and necessity, as François Jacob said. Given this conception almost universally accepted by scientists, some voices were raised suggesting that there is a teleology in the evolutionary process. How much randomness and how much necessity you think there is in changes that lead from one species to another? How gradual or abrupt do you believe these changes are, in the light of paleontological record?
Our thinking about chance, necessity and teleology in the biological sciences has been distorted by fallacies. These fallacies are an embarrassment for science. J. B. S. Haldane once said that teleology "is like a mistress to a biologist: he cannot live without her but he is unwilling to be seen with her in public." Even Jacques Monod admitted teleology to biology when he claimed that the purpose of a single bacterium is to become two bacteria. There has been this ridiculous attempt to expunge teleology from biology. It has continued to such an extent that there now is an effort to replace the name teleology with the name teleonomy, but this change in terminology does not eliminate the problem. Attempts such as this one are by-products of both wishful thinking and of an overly secularized scientific worldview known as scientism. If a Mind exists that designed the system through which all organisms have evolved, then this makes us accountable to a higher power in ways that some people would rather not think about. Ironically, a related fallacy afflicts the great rivals S. J. Gould and S. Conway Morris, both of whom accept staccato events of rapid evolution (punctuated equilibrium, Cambrian explosion) but nevertheless refuse to question their allegiance to conventional Darwinian mechanism. Changes that lead from one species to the next are obedient to laws (not yet fully understood) that remain the same from geological era to geological era. This is the main lesson to be learned from the ubiquity of convergent evolution. It is this phrase--natural selection--that must be replaced. It should be replaced with the phrase--natural tendency. This is so because true random cannot exist in nature. Every event in time is known by a Mind and is part of a design.
4. Could you tell us about your Hypersea theory?
Hypersea theory is the concept that complex life was required to become thoroughly symbiotic in order to thrive in the harsh terrestrial or land environment. Today the connection between vascular plant and fungus, that forms the main mass of Hypersea, is one of the most potent biological forces on Earth. Most life on Earth is nourished by Hypersea, thanks to a phenomenon known as hypermarine upwelling, In hypermarine upwelling, the organisms of Hypersea (vascular plants, soil fungi, and their symbionts) are able to induce a flow of nutrients from dead rock into terrestrial living matter. Excess nutrients generated by this process flow to the sea. Recent results show that mycorrhizal soil fungi are actually absorbing excess atmospheric carbon dioxide and delivering it to their vascular plant symbionts to enhance photosynthesis. Thus hypermarine upwelling both feeds the planet and can limit the impact of excess carbon dioxide buildup in the atmosphere.
5. Could you give us an inventory of your most important paleontological discoveries?
Following is a list of what I consider to be my most interesting paleontological discoveries: discovery of the Clemente Formation (Sonora, México) Ediacarans, which are the oldest known complex Ediacaran community; discovery of an Ediacaran skeletal biota (Sinotubulites) in the La Ciénega Formation of Sonora, México; development of metacellularity theory for vendobiont Ediacarans as applied to Tribrachidium and Gehlingia; development of Hypersea theory to explain the advent and true significance of life on land; use of paleobiogeography to define the supercontinent Rodinia; demonstration that the Ediacaran Spriggina was an ecdysozoan animal; prediction that conularids occur in the Ediacaran biota; discovery of cannibalism in Cambrian agnostid trilobites; elucidating the shell microstructure of the stem group brachiopod Mickwitzia; discovering the earliest evidence for predation in the fossil record, by means of the trace fossils Rusophycus multilineatus [the predator] and Planolites [the prey]; ecotone theory to quantify the advent and spread of macropredation in the Cambrian; demonstration that the enigmatic Precambrian Vermiforma was in fact a trace fossil; and elucidation of the real significance of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin's research for paleontology.
6. How did a geologist skilled in the far distant past become interested in human civilization as recent as Phoenicia? What were your findings about these traders and travelers?
The Phoenicians are intriguing because they represent the first full application of human consciousness to practical earth science. Phoenicians linked the western to the eastern Mediterranean, exploited marine counter current flow, circumnavigated Africa, discovered human like primates (gorillas) and brought their skins back to Carthage, used the North Star for navigation at night, and introduced the cultivation of wine to many lands. What other things did they accomplish? My research indicates that Phoenicians were able to sail across the Atlantic, and that in fact they did so. We need to know more about Phoenician achievement in order to understand the foundations of natural science.
7. What are you now working on? What mystery would you wish to reveal?
My current research focuses on a new discovery of Ediacaran fossils in New England, new Ediacaran animal body fossils from México, early theories concerning plate tectonics, a Hypersequel (new book on Hypersea), and the fossil record of giant cephalopods in the Ordovician. Also, I have uncovered new evidence showing the precise route that Hannibal's army took through the Alps.
1. A lo largo de la historia de la vida, distintas líneas evolutivas han llegado a parecidas soluciones para los problemas planteados por sus ambientes. A esto se le llama "evolución convergente", y se observa, por ejemplo, en las alas de los murciélagos y las aves, o los ojos de los insectos y los mamíferos. Usted sugiere, a partir de sus descubrimientos fósiles, que algo parecido sucede con los cerebros. ¿Podría comentarnos las evidencias que le han conducido a dicha conclusión?
La evolución convergente de los cerebros está bien establecida en el reino animal. Las funciones cerebrales avanzadas son bien conocidas en el linaje de los dinosaurios (loros y cuervos), en mamíferos (primates y cetáceos) y en moluscos (cefalópodos). La cuestión que planteé en "El jardín de Ediacara: el descubrimiento de la la primera vida compleja" fue: ¿empezaron los vendobiontes (miembros no animales de la biota de Ediacara) el camino hacia la inteligencia, la resolución de problemas? Sí. Varios linajes de vendobiontes desarrollaron cabezas, de constitución vendobionte, no animal. Así pues, tanto los vendobiontes ediacarenses como los animales ediacarenses estaban en un sendero evolutivo que llleva a la función cerebral superior. Los vendobiontes se extinguieron, mientras que los artrópodos sobrevivieron y siguieron desarrollando conductas avanzadas, como se ve en las modernas arañas saltarinas (Salticidae). Las arañas saltarinas pueden aproximarse y atacar desde atrás a los insectos que apresan usando un mapa tridimensional que construyen en su cerebro.
Nuestros conceptos de azar, necesidad y teleología en las ciencias biológicas han sido distorsionados por falacias. Estas falacias son un impedimento para la ciencia. J. B. S. Haldane dijo una vez que la teleología "es para un biólogo como una amante: no puede vivir sin ella pero no está dispuesto a que se le vea con ella en público". Incluso Jacques Monod admitió la teleología en la biología cuando afirmó que el propósito de una bacteria es llegar a ser dos bacterias. Ha habido este ridículo intento de eliminar la teleología de la biología. Ha continuado hasta tal punto que hay ahora un esfuerzo para sustituir la palabra "teleología" por "teleonomía", pero este cambio de terminología no elimina el problema. Intentos como este son subproductos tanto del pensamiento desiderativo como de una cosmovisión científica exageradamente secularizada conocida como cientismo. Si existe una Mente que diseñó el sistema a través del cual han evolucionado todos los organismos, entonces esto los hace responsables ante un poder superior en maneras en las que algunas personas preferirían no pensar. Irónicamente, una falacia emparentada aflige a los grandes rivales S. J. Gould y S. Conway Morris; ambos aceptan eventos destacados de evolución rápida (equilibrio puntuado, explosión cámbrica) pero sin embargo rehúsan cuestionarse su adhesión al mecanicismo darwiniano convencional. Los cambios que llevan de una especie a la próxima obedecen a leyes (que aún no se entienden plenamente) que permanecen las mismas de una era geológica a otra. Esta es la principal lección a extraer de la ubicuidad de la evolución convergente. Es esta frase, "selección natural", la que debe reemplazarse. Debería reemplazarse por la frase "tendencia natural". Esto es así porque el auténtico azar no puede existir en la naturaleza. Todo evento en el tiempo es conocido por una Mente y es parte de un designio.