Lecture 1: The Rise of Animals

heard of some recent experiments in biology which attempted to induce multicellular life by subjecting some yeast specimens to selective breeding plus induced pressures.

Massive breakthrough occured when yeast was subjected to low-oxygen environments, forcing them to form rudimentary circulation, more robust structures, and i think also castes.

Well. I guess it makes me feel better that humans aren't alone in altering our world. Seems that's just a byproduct of life itself. 🤷🏻

excellent presentation!! and no commonplace stammering or meandering....fascinating!!

Is there anything you can place up that would help explain how animals actually developed the ability to move? Like how did they go from sessile to being able to be mobile?

A great presentation with so much useful information. When you mentioned that there was a significant release of phosphate into the marine environment after one of the early glaciations, it reminded me that (I believe) all eucariotes metabolize ATP (Adenine Tri-Phosphate) to ADP (Adenine Di-Phosphate). Life as it existed probably couldn't get complex and large if there wasn't adequate Phosphate to metabolize.

Thank you it was very good 💯

If oxygenation started after the banded iron layers were formed, how did that iron in the banded iron layers oxidize ? ... also how representative are the deposits containing the Ediacaran fossils for the whole area of the surface of the earth ?

I really appreciated your lectures during COVID lock down.

Awesome.
Thanks a lot

WORM WARS! Current thinking among scholars is trending towards understanding that there was an Ediacaran Explosion prior to the Cambrian Explosion, but we know the oceanic chemistry necessary to develop calcium-carbonate body parts didn't exist until near the end of the Ediacaran. The more conservative among paleontologists seem to think that there was very little diversity prior to the late Ediacaran, because without shells, teeth, etc, almost no evidence of diversity is left in the geologic record, ergo it didn't exist.

NONSENSE, there is evidence of worm tracks in the sea floor of shallow, coastal waters going back almost to the last Slushball/Snowball Earth, and by the end of the Ediacaran, a worm was building layer after layer of thick, cup-like armor rising up out of the coastal biotic mat, which had a large circular hole drilled into it from another worm trying to eat it (Google THAT picture). Things were getting BUSY in that mat, obviously. All PRE-CAMBRIAN.

There was clearly intense predatory behaviour going on among worms in the mat long before calcium carbonate allowed a geologic record of it. Eventually genetics might allow us to piece it all together, but until then, CMON, WORM WARS were a thing throughout the Ediacaran, the predation eventually resulting in Molluscs (fat worms with shells), Crustaceans (shelled worms with funky limbs), Vertebrates (fast worms with inner skeletons), etc etc etc.

Their earliest, worm ancestors had to have been subject to predation, and when animal life got highly competitive IN the mat, that's when worm variants started getting the hell out of there to live, and only then could they leave fossils. Some levels of the mat clearly lived by dissolving and absorbing the remains of anything that died IN the mat. No record, except ancestors who were just too evolved, too fast.

Almost all modern animals are basically worms with a bunch of stuff added on, it's kind of obvious that there had to be incredible diversity and predation among worms throughout the Ediacaran, not just at the very end, for the incredible diversity of late Ediacaran and Cambrian Explosion to be reasonably explained.

The diversity of the Cambrian makes a lot more sense if there was "amazing" diversity among the Ediacaran worms who evolved into these Cambrian animals, they just couldn't leave a record of their existence until calcium-carbonate body parts became possible due to oceanic chemistry changes in the late Ediacaran. By then, they were pretty diverse and complex, to the point where they were eating the mat, and earlier above-mat animals, out of existence.


Imho😉

100th comment. Now I need to say something amazing. "SOMETHING AMAZING"

Thank you very much for giving us the incredible opportunity to enjoy such awesome content 🙏

Jason you have such a great lecture voice! I love these, thank you, please please please make more just like this. This is perfect!

How can cholesterols and steroids last 500-600 million years??? Wouldn’t they break down by then? How could they be sure the sample wasn’t contaminated?

You need to split it up into shorter videos. Nobody’s gonna watch a one hour and 30 minute video. This is basic!

Thanks for a wonderful job, Jason. My wife thought it was the voice of the Khan Academy guy. I told her the Khan Academy guy is a smart gentleman, but I wouldn’t expect him to be that fluent in Paleontology. You are wonderful, clear, and one can tell that you breathe this stuff.

This was wonderful; thank you so much for sharing. Not only is this a valuable source of free information, but it's also a beautiful time capsule of the early pandemic days. I couldn't help but chuckle when you said "Just pull me aside- well I guess send me an email since you can't pull me aside anymore". It perfectly captures that period in March 2020 when we were all collectively coming to the realization that life was about to be very different.

I always thought Dickinsonia resembled a huge, round flatworm, and shows some very early development of having an anterior and posterior end. its segments were asymetrical, but look to have still had a degree of motor function, allowing it to scoot across the seabed. If thats the case, it would likely have developed front and back ends simply to make better use of its mobility

This was a fascinating lecture which gave me a lot of insights about what was going on before the "Cambrian explosion" and possibly why. The longer I watched it, the more I asked myself: If virtually all of that strange Ediacaran fauna became extinct until the end of the Ediacaran, where do all the "modern" animals (rsp. their classes) come from? Its hard to imagine that they evolved once again "from scratch" i. e. from monocellular eucaryotes. So their ancestors must have crawled around among the other Ediacaran critters. Is it that we just haven't found them yet, or are we still trying to puzzle together who is who, having only very vague ideas about their evolutionary relationship with later forms? Or maybe my way of thinking is just plain wrong. Maybe Ediacaran biota only became "extinct" the way dinosaurs died out, leaving birds as their contemporary offspring?

Great video.
The “cam” in “Cambrian” is pronounced “cam”, not “came”, BTW. It is derived from the Roman name for Wales, and has nothing to do with Cambridge (if that’s the reason for the mispronunciation).

Thanks for the lecture,,I truly enjoy your method of teaching although I'm not in your class, just getting my Greek on.pleas show your face, it's more personable.i would like to thank you for your time and helping the next generation.

Do you really think you have to urge people to give their opinions about how to improve your videos?

Engaging and informative, even for the casual observer. Kudos!

I am curious how old is cancer in the fossil record?

Thanks for the lectures. Went a different career path. When I was a kid I wanted to be a fossil hunter, an astronaut and a pirate. A few decades later.......I wanna be a pirate, a fossil hunter and an astronaut :) This gent is both informative to a semi-layman but is also interesting and engaging. Wish a few more of my undergrad/grad profs were even 1/10th as interesting.

1950s sci-fi movie "The Predatory Worm" would have been great 👍

Please put out a Video on the Boring Biljon.

The one good thing the future will remember about the COVID pandemic is this flood of excellent lectures from fantastic teachers. Thanks from Germany for sharing your insights. And keep on exposing the creationists nutters for what they are. I saw Darwin´s dilemma and indeed a waste of time.

Most interesting.

So cool that I’ve decided to Jeep B.C. this fall, with daughter, and stop by the Burgess Shale formation. We did Olduvai a few years back.

Thanks for no annoying background muzak ..........

Hi from another professor. I'm a biologist with a background in plants and I just love this lecture series! I do a small segment on the history of life on earth in my general biology (mixed majors and nonmajors) class but this is far more detailed. I've been really fascinated by paleontology for a while, but I've never been able to take a class in it so this is a treat. Thank you. :) One of my missions when I get back to Toronto is to visit the ROM again. :)

I'm here for the evolution of sex.

I started listing and you made this so interesting that I was compelled to stop everything and listen. I felt like you made this almost conversational. Like you were tutoring me individually

Excellent lecture!
My mind was not blown by the Tribrachidium with three fold symmetry, it was blown by the fact that a jelly fish can and has been fossilized, still hard to wrap my head around that.

Jason Loxton's "Rise of the Animals" was very informative. Not as entertaining as Arnold Schwarzenegger's "Terminator - Rise of the Machines."
If you're looking for action and entertainment - Rise of the Machines.
Want to learn how the world we live in came about? - Rise of the Animals.

Hugely appreciated this lecture series as it ties together many key evolutionary concepts with plenty of real-world examples.

Many lectures will talk about selective pressures but don't spend enough time on the interplay between a changing environment and life that depends on it and how it exploits those changes, and by doing so changing the micro and possibly macro environment in turn, while also creating new niches and opportunities for specialization for other life in multiple ecologies.

You do a great job in revealing the elegance of biogeocoenosis in a very approachable way. If you are able or willing to record future lectures, I'd love to watch them.

I was really confused, until I realized you're Canadian. Then it all made a lot more sense. Hello from Russia 🇷🇺

I'm told every living cell has DNA.
DNA is made from 4 base nucleotides
Nucleotides are made of organic protiens and organic acids.
If this is so, can you explain how organic protiens and organic acids are made from inorganic sources?

Looks like I just found my next series to binge on! Some great new insights (for me) on a fascinating topic.

You must love the new alleged 900 million year old sponge fossil :)