This was once most probably Gehling’s maximum damning grievance, since Seilacher was once a number one professional within the science of fossil preservation. However no much less critical had been his allegations that Seilacher misinterpreted the fossils themselves, in all probability as a result of he was once now not sufficiently aware of them. Writing of Dickinsonia, Gehling noticed that “[e]xamination of a number of hundred specimens of this taxon unearths the presence of a number of traits that the ‘air bed’ fashion can’t accommodate” (Gehling 1991, 195, emphasis added). For instance, maximum specimens display a transparent difference between their back and front ends, opposite to Seilacher’s claims. Some specimens additionally showcase a crinking of particular person segments suggestive of muscular contraction and the potential of locomotion. In Gehling’s view, those options “level to Dickinsonia as a functioning coelomate-grate [animal], ready to react to sensory enter” (198). Identical difficulties connected to different of Seilacher’s interpretations, main Gehling to conclude that it’s “[o]nly with an excessively large brush [that] all Ediacaran organisms [can] be represented as fractal enlargement permutations according to the similar gadgets of building” (202).
In spite of those criticisms, the vendobiont speculation “to start with attracted really extensive beef up from paleontologists (Dunn and Liu 2019, 513). Arthropod specialist Jan Bergström noticed in 1991 that “most of the [Ediacaran] organisms… most probably belong to a gaggle of ‘quilted organisms’ which is probably not animals and showcase no shut similarity to bilaterians” (Bergström 1991, 32). Man Narbonne made a equivalent declare in 1998, arguing that some Ediacarans most probably represented “a failed experiment in Precambrian evolution” (Narbonne 1998, 1). Those remarks display that positive parts of Seilacher’s interpretation discovered uptake amongst Precambrian paleontologists. But arguably a extra important impact of Seilacher’s paintings was once to “flip the dialogue of Ediacaran affinities from a monolith [into] a free-for-all” (Narbonne 2005, 431). Within the fifteen years following (Seilacher 1989), individuals of the Ediacaran biota had been interpreted as protists, lichens, fungi, colonial prokaryotes, and extinct photosynthetic “metacellulars” (the closing recommendation was once McMenamin’s). On the identical time, the vendobiont speculation “stimulated analysis in comparative biology, taphonomy, and ecology in an try to deduce the affinities of those pivotal fossils.” This has undermined the vendobiont speculation in the rest equivalent to its provocative, authentic shape. Nonetheless, what’s in all probability extra important is that analysis on various sides of Ediacaran biology stays a going fear. Lately there are extra researchers learning Ediacaran fossils than ever ahead of, and this turns out not going to modify any time quickly.
* * *
Such a lot for the outrageous hypotheses. In Phase 2, I can overview some contemporary philosophical paintings on hypothesis in geohistory and broaden my account of “well-controlled” and “unhealthy hypothesis.” Then, I exploit those assets to investigate the reception of the outrageous hypotheses and to extract some provisional epistemic conclusions.
* Discover a hyperlink to Phase 2 right here (when to be had)…
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