Modern cell and developmental biology has a lot to contribute to our understanding of the deep history of animal origins, which until recently has been largely the province of paleontology. In this set of lectures, I hope to show how recent studies by a very small group of scientists on a virtually unknown phylum of marine organisms, the hemichordates, has helped explain some of the major mysteries of the origin of vertebrates. This is a tour of not only vertebrate origins but the...

Biotic response of Tethyan bathyal ostracodes through the Eocene-Oligocene Transition from the Massignano Composite Stratotype Section (east central Italy) - The Eocene-Oligocene Transition (EOT) is marked by a double-stepped ~1.3‰ positive excursion in d18O over an ~300 kyr interval (i.e., Oi-1; Miller et al., 1991; Zachos et al., 1996; Coxall et al., 2005) and a deepening of the calcium compensation depth (CCD) interpreted to represent marked Antarctic glaciation and global...