Niles Eldredge
@nilese.bsky.social
Pinned
Niles Eldredge
@nilese.bsky.social
· Nov 22
Reflections on punctuated equilibria | Paleobiology | Cambridge Core
Reflections on punctuated equilibria
doi.org
It’s a pleasure to share my “Reflections on Punctuated Equilibria” paper out earlier this year. Looking forward to posting more, and conversing with the growing crowd of evolutionary-minded savants of all disciplines! doi.org/10.1017/pab....
Reposted by Niles Eldredge
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...
Latest issue | Paleobiology | Cambridge Core
Paleobiology
www.cambridge.org
January 2, 2026 at 6:31 PM
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!!
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...
Latest issue | Paleobiology | Cambridge Core
Paleobiology
www.cambridge.org
January 2, 2026 at 7:23 PM
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!!
Reposted by Niles Eldredge
"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...
organizingmythoughts.org/some-thought...
Some Thoughts on Techno-Fascism From Socialism 2025
"This is the endgame of our isolation."
organizingmythoughts.org
July 5, 2025 at 10:24 AM
"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...
organizingmythoughts.org/some-thought...
Phase one of the ongoing human gaiacidal extinction pulse of the biosphere . Once again, pitifully few insects in my backyard….
Phylogenetic Evidence Supports the Effect of Traits on Late-Quaternary Megafauna Extinction in the Context of Human Activity onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.... 🧪🌐
Phylogenetic Evidence Supports the Effect of Traits on Late‐Quaternary Megafauna Extinction in the Context of Human Activity
Aim The late-Quaternary extinctions, which affected primarily large mammals, are strongly connected to the migration of modern humans out of sub-Saharan Africa and tropical Asia (the Palaeotropics),...
onlinelibrary.wiley.com
June 30, 2025 at 5:42 PM
Phase one of the ongoing human gaiacidal extinction pulse of the biosphere . Once again, pitifully few insects in my backyard….
Cool Sergi!!!
Next July 14th, I will be at the @i2sysbio.es talking about our recent work about punctuated evolution in culture, technology, biology, and more. i2sysbio.es. @blaividiella.bsky.social @sduran-nebreda.bsky.social @andrejpaleo.bsky.social @nilese.bsky.social @ibe-barcelona.bsky.social
June 30, 2025 at 12:24 PM
Cool Sergi!!!
Reposted by Niles Eldredge
🦏🦣🦌 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...
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
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...
www.nature.com
June 5, 2025 at 9:10 AM
🦏🦣🦌 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...
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Reposted by Niles Eldredge
"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)".
June 1, 2025 at 1:19 PM
"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 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.
Elisabeth Vrba obituary
Published in Transactions of the Royal Society of South Africa (Ahead of Print, 2025)
www.tandfonline.com
May 30, 2025 at 4:15 PM
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
Douglas et al. shows that up to 99% of evolutionary change occur at branching points across genes, morphology, and language. A major step for punctuated evolution, aligning with our goal of a unified framework. @nilese.bsky.social @andrejpaleo.bsky.social #EvoBio #CultEvo doi.org/10.1098/rspb...
Evolution is coupled with branching across many granularities of life | Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences
Across many scales of life, the rate of evolutionary change is often accelerated at the time when one lineage splits into two. The emergence of novel protein function can be facilitated by gene duplication (neofunctionalization); rapid morphological ...
doi.org
May 29, 2025 at 1:48 PM
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…..
“the reason why the climate crisis and civilisational collapse are upon us is that they are the most lucrative businesses that ever existed”
open.substack.com/pub/georgets...
open.substack.com/pub/georgets...
Laboured to Extinction: How We Became the Planet of the Working Zombies
As societies grew into increasingly complex economies, the need for specialised skills gave rise to specialised humans.
open.substack.com
May 21, 2025 at 11:26 AM
This essay has the deep and simple ring of truth about it…..
Reposted by Niles Eldredge
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...
"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...
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
scienceblog.com
May 2, 2025 at 1:15 PM
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...
"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...
Reposted by Niles Eldredge
In case you hadn't noticed:
April 23, 2025 at 3:09 PM
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!
Great to see a new study in "Paleobiology" by Ilya Tëmkin further developing ideas of biological hierarchies in connection to geobiomes (described last year by us with N. Eldredge @nilese.bsky.social ).
www.cambridge.org/core/journal...
🧪 #Paleobio ⚒️ #Geology #EvoBio #Macroecology
www.cambridge.org/core/journal...
🧪 #Paleobio ⚒️ #Geology #EvoBio #Macroecology
March 24, 2025 at 2:21 PM
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 terrific. Good to see stasis called out! Ironically, same issue of Nature with my obit for Elisabeth Vrba
March 20, 2025 at 1:10 PM
Looks terrific. Good to see stasis called out! Ironically, same issue of Nature with my obit for Elisabeth Vrba
Thank you Bruce—means a lot to hear you say so !!!
March 13, 2025 at 10:44 PM
Thank you Bruce—means a lot to hear you say so !!!
Reposted by Niles Eldredge
🔆 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...
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...
March 13, 2025 at 12:30 PM
🔆 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...
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...
That’s wonderful to hear Paulyn!!
February 11, 2025 at 5:43 PM
That’s wonderful to hear Paulyn!!
Reposted by Niles Eldredge
Could not agree more @nilese.bsky.social An honor and privilege to have known and worked with this key figure in #macroevolution & #paleontology #palaeontology
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.
February 11, 2025 at 4:14 AM
Could not agree more @nilese.bsky.social An honor and privilege to have known and worked with this key figure in #macroevolution & #paleontology #palaeontology
Reposted by Niles Eldredge
World lost a second macroevolutionary musketeer — Elisabeth Vrba. R.I.P. Elisabeth the Great.
🧪 #Paleobio ⚒️ #Geology #EvoBio
🧪 #Paleobio ⚒️ #Geology #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.
February 11, 2025 at 7:56 AM
Great—I like line!
February 11, 2025 at 1:10 AM
Great—I like line!