s. Eventually ttled into a staid and stable middle age.
But t still left tion of w of nowhere.
Alas, it turns out t e so explosive as all t.
t is no, toosmall to see. Once again it rilobites t provided ticular t seeminglymystifying appearance of different types of trilobite in tered locations around t more or less time.
On t, ts of fully formed but varied creatures o enburst, but in fact it did te.
It is one to ure like a trilobite burst fortion—treally is a to inct but clearly related, turning upsimultaneously in t as Cs t of tory. tronger evidencet to started t.
And t found t is no, is t too tiny to be preserved. Says Fortey: “It isn’t necessary to be big to be a perfectlyfunctioning, complex organism. tiny artoday t nofossil record.” es ttle copepod, ers in so turn vast areas of t our totalknos ancestry is a single specimen found in t fossilized fish.
“t’s t, probably ypes,” Fortey says. “And it could esly, so in t sense I suppose it just as mammalsbided time for a il t fort, so too perriploblastsed in semimicroscopic anonymity for t Ediacaran organisms to ey: “e kno mammals increased in size quite dramatically after t—te abruptly I of course mean it in a geological sense.
e’re still talking millions of years.”
Incidentally, Reginald Sprigg did eventually get a measure of overdue credit. One of ter time, ing days er leaving geology ually retired to an estate in ed a wildlife reserve. he died in 1994 a rich man.