Conway Morris

Conway-Morris, S. (2003). Life s Solution, Inevitable Humans in a Lonely Universe. Cambridge University Press. 

Conway Morris, S. (1 981) Parasites and the fossil record. Parasitology 82, 489-509. 

Ehlers, U. (1985) Phylogenetic relationships within the Platyhelminthes. In Conway Morris, S., George, J.D., Gibson, R. and Platt, H.M. (eds) The Origins and Relationships of Lower Invertebrates. Oxford University, Oxford, UK, pp. 143-158. 

Conklin, E. G. 1918. Heredity and Environment in the Development of Men. Princeton University Press, Princeton, New Jersey. Conway Morris, S. 1993. The fossil record and the early evolution of the Metazoa. Nature, 361, 219-225. 

It is remarkable to Conway Morris, for instance, that more than a dozen mole-like burrowing (fossorial) animals from around the world exhibit closely comparable bodily features, even though they belong to entirely different species (2003, pp. 139 4). Tlie rapacious teeth of some predatory marsupials are nearly identical in structure to those of certain placental animals, although their respective evolutionary courses unfolded oceans apart. In species that are clearly unrelated. 

Prothero, D. R. 2003. Inevitable humans Or hidden agendas A review of Life s Solution by Simon Conway Morris. The Skeptic, 10 (3), 54-7. 

Professor Conway Morris is a co-editor of this current volume. 

Oakes, E. T. (2004). The evolution of evolution, a review of Simon Conway Morris,... 

The purpose of this review is two-fold. First, it is to question the prevailing belief (or, if the reader prefers, paradigm) that evolution has effectively no predictabilities, let alone destinations. This is an issue reviewed at some length in my book Life s Solution (Conway Morris, 2003). Here I particularly want to explore issues I dealt with there only cursorily, or not at all, not least because new information has since become available. A second purpose of direct relevance to the theme of this volume is to ask (if only in outline) what some of the basic and necessary physicochemical underpinnings of life might be. To reiterate Henderson s phrase, the question at hand is what physico-chemical factors might contribute to the fitness of life itself. 

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