2026:Reconstructing Extinct Organisms & the History of Life

^{Please Note: Due to the topic, the 2026 History of Biology Seminar will be invite only.}

Seminar Timeline: May 14th – 19th, 2026 (travel days May 13 and May 20th)

Bay Reading Room, 2nd Floor Lillie Library, Marine Biological Laboratory

About

How do we reconstruct from limited fossils and other traces the complex history of life, what long-extinct organisms looked like, and even how they behaved? How do we bring together diverse sources of often conflicting evidence to tell a coherent story about the history of life and its central characters? This seminar in the history & philosophy of paleobiology will bring together historians, philosophers, and paleoscientists to explore epistemic challenges and creative opportunities for answering these questions.

Historically, one can identify the following three main research programs in the project of reconstructing the history of life, which provide the three central subthemes of the seminar:
     I. Functional & Developmental Approaches to Extinct Life: 
          From Paleoart to Biomechanical Modeling
     II. Phylogenetic Approaches to Extinct Life
     III. Co-evolution of Life & Environment: From Paleobiology to Geobiology

Each of these has been developed by different actors at different time periods, and although all three continue to be pursued today, they have, until recently, been developed in relative isolation. However, as this seminar will reveal, there are productive comparisons and connections to be explored between these various research programs, as well as questions of what is gained or lost by focusing on the different levels and the unique resources of each. Most recently, scientists have begun to face the challenges of integrating these diverse—and sometimes conflicting—sources of data, raising new philosophical questions.

In this seminar, we will devote a day to each of the following themes, with an additional day to explore the challenges and opportunities for their integration:

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I. Functional and Developmental Approaches to Extinct Life: From Paleoart to Biomechanical Modeling)
Insights from functional analogues and comparative developmental studies of living organisms have been critical paths to understanding extinct life. Such studies raise questions about how paleontologists can infer function from form, or from developmental information. Artistic reconstructions of extinct life, for both scientific and artistic purposes have relied upon these approaches. Inference from form to function and from development have been essential to paleontology for two centuries, but each avenue has been re-invigorated in recent decades by new techniques, such as computational modeling for functional morphology, and the rise of comparative evo-devo. While seemingly distinct, these two approaches share common problems of inference, arguments from analogy, and the projection of evidence from living taxa into the deep past. The focus of these studies is often on reconstructing individual organisms. (Image I: Duria Antiquior, a more ancient Dorset, watercolor by Henry De la Beche, 1830; public domain).

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II. Phylogenetic Approaches to Extinct Life
The introduction of phylogenetic methods beginning in the 1980s with parsimony, and later with maximum likelihood and Bayesian methods transformed systematic practice (not without considerable turmoil) as did the subsequent adoption of molecular studies of modern organisms as a scaffold for understanding phylogenetic relationships. How have these changes impacted knowledge of phylogeny and evolutionary patterns? How are phylogenetic methods used to reconstruct past life, particularly inferring the nature of last common ancestors? What are the assumptions and limitations of such approaches? How does the inclusion of fossil taxa influence phylogenetic results? What has been the influence of reliance on monophyletic clades rather than ‘higher taxa’, evolutionary grades, and paraphyletic taxa? Some phylogenetic nodes have been more stable than others – what impact has this had? The focus of these studies is at the level of species or clades and on the processes of speciation, diversification, and extinction. (Image II: Paleontological Chart, Edward Hitchcock, 1840, pre-Darwinian “tree of life” for plants and animals; public domain).

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III. Co-evolution of Life and Environment: From Paleobiology to Geobiology & Geochemistry
The 1980 impact hypothesis for the Cretaceous/Tertiary mass extinction and studies of the Ediacaran-Cambrian diversification of animals, each expanded the diversity of scientists interested in studying of the history of life and reconstructing patterns of paleodiversity to include geochemists, statisticians, and even physicists. Today studies of the co-evolution of life and environment from the Archean to the Pleistocene have become routine. This has had significant, but poorly explored, impacts on understanding extinct life, including lesser emphasis on individual specimens in favor of statistical approaches and the introduction of various other proxies for past life, including a variety of stable isotopic systems and biomarkers, and how they related to paleoenvironmental changes. This historical turn, from paleontology to paleobiology, and then more recently to geobiology and geochemistry is not only of historical interest, but also raises important new epistemological questions. (Image III: Chemical argument for Precambrian sponges, two organic molecule biomarkers produced by sponges and whose molecular fossils have been used controversially to infer the presence of sponges prior to the Cambrian explosion;  Wikipedia 24-Isopropylcholestane ).

Ample time will be included for informal interactions, touring Woods Hole and the islands, as well as a final recap of the week and plan for future directions. A central aim of this seminar, beyond exploring these questions, is to help build a stronger research community in the history & philosophy of the paleosciences.