[Review] Macroevolutionaries: Reflections on Natural History, Paleontology, and Stephen Jay Gould | National Center for Science Education

Big 🙏 to Tricia Kelley of UNCW for her review of my & @nilese.bsky.social 's @columbiaup.bsky.social 📕 book "Macroevolutionaries" in @ncse.bsky.social reports: ncse.ngo/review-macro... #macroevolution #paleontology #palaeontology #punctuatedequilibria #stephenjaygould

Cover of book Macroevolutionaries by Bruce Lieberman and Niles Eldredge.

Back cover of book Macroevolutionaries by Bruce Lieberman and Niles Eldredge.

Finished my first book of 2026, Macroevolutionaries by @bruceslieberman.bsky.social and @nilese.bsky.social. It’s a wonderful tribute to Gould, every essay is enlightening, but the one on Kestrels is my favorite.

Thank you Gregory!

Really excited to have the new issue of Paleobiology @paleosoc.bsky.social out celebrating the 50th anniversary of #punctuatedequilibria #macroevolution #paleobiology #palaeontology #paleontology @nilese.bsky.social www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

Wow—thanks @bruceslieberman.bsky.social for posting the entire issue of Paleobiology vol 51/4 2025 “Punctuated Equilibria at 50”—open access papers from the GSA 2022 50th anniversary symposium! A great community celebration!!

Thanks John!

Some Thoughts on Techno-Fascism From Socialism 2025 "This is the endgame of our isolation."

"Men who sell machines that mimic people want us to become people who mimic machines. They want techno feudal subjects who will believe and do what they’re told. We, as people, are being strategically simplified. This is a fascist process."

organizingmythoughts.org/some-thought...

Phase one of the ongoing human gaiacidal extinction pulse of the biosphere . Once again, pitifully few insects in my backyard….

Cool Sergi!!!

Two major ecological shifts shaped 60 million years of ungulate faunal evolution - Nature Communications Here, the authors analyze a fossil dataset spanning 60 million years to investigate ecological stability. Their network analysis identifies prolonged stability interrupted by two major functional tran...

🦏🦣🦌 LARGE paper alert!!! We tracked 60 million years of large herbivore evolution—over 3,000 fossil species—to uncover how ecosystems have changed and reorganized through time. What we found might help us understand the next big tipping point 🧵👇
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

"Speciation and extinction are invoked in all predictions for paleontological patterns. What processes one chooses is less important than that the meanings are clearly stated. Thus, I introduce my arguments with reference to the phylogenetic trees in figure 1 (Vrba, 1993)".

Elisabeth Vrba obituary Published in Transactions of the Royal Society of South Africa (Ahead of Print, 2025)

Elisabeth Vrba obituary www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10..... My thanks to Georg Vrba, Elisabeth’s husband, for information and photos on her life and work in South Africa.

I think this paper will be a tipping point in understanding the fundamental importance of punctuational change in all “evolutionary” domains—i.e. where evolution is seen as the fate of transmissible information

This essay has the deep and simple ring of truth about it…..

Ocean Heat Bands Reshape Global Climate Patterns The world's oceans are heating in two distinct bands circling the globe, with potentially far-reaching implications for weather patterns and marine

Your 'moment of doom' for May 2, 2025 ~10 Hiroshimas per second.

"New research reveals these warming zones are located near 40 degrees latitude in both hemispheres, creating a striking pattern that has emerged since 2005."

scienceblog.com/ocean-heat-b...

In case you hadn't noticed:

Great to see Ilya Tëmkin’s recent thinking on Hierarchy Theory—and on the newly reconstituted “Bretskyan Hierarchy.” Towards a “General Theory of Biology” indeed!

Looks fantastic!!!

Looks terrific. Good to see stasis called out! Ironically, same issue of Nature with my obit for Elisabeth Vrba

Good Grief

Thank you Bruce—means a lot to hear you say so !!!

Elisabeth Vrba

Elisabeth Vrba

🔆 A great tribute to the brilliant Elisabeth Vrba
Palaeontologist who solved a problem that vexed Darwin

“I’m interested in pushing out the frontiers of science,
not sailing my boat through tranquil seas.”

Elisabeth Vrba (1942–2025) 🧪
By @nilese.bsky.social
www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Terrific Roy!!!!

My Obituary of Elisabeth Vrba—out today in Nature in read-only format:

rdcu.be/ediyO

That’s wonderful to hear Paulyn!!

Could not agree more @nilese.bsky.social An honor and privilege to have known and worked with this key figure in #macroevolution & #paleontology #palaeontology

World lost a second macroevolutionary musketeer — Elisabeth Vrba. R.I.P. Elisabeth the Great.
🧪 #Paleobio ⚒️ #Geology #EvoBio

Great—I like line!

Punctuated progression of cancers

Cool new article on the punctuational nature of metastasising cancer process!
doi.org/10.1098/rspb...
This study strengthens our conjectured universality of the punctuational change, so called 'punctuated evolution'.
cell.com/trends/ecolo...
doi.org/10.1111/pala...
🧪 #Paleobio #EvoBio

I am deeply saddened to have learned of the death, on Feb 5, 2025, of Elisabeth Vrba—a fantastically creative scientist and a warm, wonderful human being. She leaves us a legacy of original macroevolutionary thinking that is still fresh and illuminating.