The Asteroid Story, a Gift That Keeps on Giving

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After the asteroid impact, with three quarters of plant and animal species killed off, a now, the ocean was a very different habitat post asteroid. And what you see among those mammals are that mammals got much bigger, very ckly, than they ever did before in earth's history. So quite clearly, take away the big, i'm not koing to say the bullies, that's putting characteristics to dinosars, i don't really want to put on them. But that dominant animal that was really keeping mammals in in a much smaller niche take away those dinosar, and the mammals exploded.

Evolution is a messy business, involving as it does selection pressures, mutations, genetic drift, and the effects of random external interventions. So in the end, how much of it is predictable, and how much is in the hands of chance? Today we’re thrilled to have as a guest my evil (but more respectable, by most measures) twin, the biologist Sean B. Carroll. Sean is both a leader of the modern evo-devo revolution, and a wonderful and diverse writer. We talk about the importance of randomness and unpredictability in life, from the evolution of species to the daily routine of every individual.

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Sean B. Carroll received a Ph.D. in immunology from Tufts University. He is currently the Andrew and Mary Balo and Nicholas and Susan Simon Endowed Chair of Biology at the University of Maryland, Vice-President for Science Education at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, the Executive Director of HHMI Tangled Bank Studios, and Professor Emeritus of Genetics and Molecular Biology at the University of Wisconsin. His new book, A Series of Fortunate Events: Chance and the Making of the Planet, Life, and You, explores the role of chance in the development of life.

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