A history of deep time: Indigenous knowledges and deep pasts in settler-colonial presents

AbstractThe Tibetan Plateau (TP) and surrounding regions have one of the most complex biotas on Earth. However, the evolutionary history of these regions in deep time is poorly understood. Here, we quantify the temporal changes in beta dissimilarities among zoogeographical regions during the Cenozoic using 4,966 extant terrestrial vertebrates and 1,278 extinct mammal genera. We identify ten present-day zoogeographical regions and find that they underwent a striking change over time. Specifically, the fauna on the TP was close to the Oriental realm in deep time but became more similar to the Palearctic realms more recently. The present-day zoogeographical regions generally emerged during the Miocene/Pliocene boundary (ca. 5 Ma). These results indicate that geological events such as the Indo-Asian Collision, the TP uplift, and the aridification of the Asian interior underpinned the evolutionary history of the zoogeographical regions surrounding the TP over different time periods.

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The contribution of publications of the Yorkshire Geological Society to the understanding of the geological development of the Carboniferous Pennine Basin, northern England

Proceedings of the Yorkshire Geological Society ◽

10.1144/pygs2018-019 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 63 (1) ◽

pp. 1-32

Author(s):

C. N. Waters ◽

D. W. Holliday ◽

J. I. Chisholm

Keyword(s):

Industrial Revolution ◽

Mineral Resources ◽

Deep Time ◽

The Bible ◽

Great Insight ◽

History Of ◽

Sea Level Variations ◽

Strong Control ◽

Insight Into ◽

Peak District

The Carboniferous rocks of the Pennine Basin form the topographical spine of the region between the Scottish Border and the Peak District. They provided many of the mineral resources that fuelled the Industrial Revolution and the growth of the great northern English cities. The description of these resources was very much a focus of early papers in the Proceedings, but they went beyond the assessment of their economic importance, providing striking early insights into our understanding of deep time when the Bible still had a strong control on scientific thinking. Over a 180 year history of publication, the Proceedings and Occasional Publications contain an unparalleled description of the rocks of the Pennine Basin of Carboniferous deposition, and they continue to provide great insight into what have been intensively studied successions but of which much still remains to be learned. This review considers the relevance of these publications to our understanding of the sedimentology of Carboniferous strata, the geometries of Carboniferous basins, how these basins constrained the formation of reefs and controlled the movement of rivers and deltas in the process of eventual infill of these basins, and how sea-level variations influenced the development of cyclical successions, the hallmark of much of the Carboniferous succession.

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Disagreement, Deep Time, and Progress in Philosophy

International Journal for the Study of Skepticism ◽

10.1163/22105700-20191358 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 9 (4) ◽

pp. 285-313

Author(s):

Kirk Lougheed

Keyword(s):

History Of Philosophy ◽

Peer Disagreement ◽

Epistemology Of Disagreement ◽

Deep Time ◽

Philosophical Beliefs ◽

Epistemic Peer ◽

Contingent Fact ◽

The Future ◽

History Of ◽

Sceptical Conclusion

The epistemology of disagreement examines the question of how an agent ought to respond to awareness of epistemic peer disagreement about one of her beliefs. The literature on this topic, ironically enough, represents widespread disagreement about how we should respond to disagreement. I argue for the sceptical conclusion that the existence of widespread disagreement throughout the history of philosophy, and right up until the present day indicates that philosophers are highly unreliable at arriving at the truth. If truth convergence indicates progress in a field, then there is little progress in philosophy. This sceptical conclusion, however, need not make us give up philosophizing: That we should currently be sceptical of our philosophical beliefs is a contingent fact. We are an intellectually immature species and given the existence of the deep future we have some reason to think that there will be truth-convergence in philosophy in the future.

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ARCHAEOLOGICAL VIEWS ON A HISTORY OF LANDSCAPE CHANGE IN EAST AFRICA

The Journal of African History ◽

10.1017/s002185379700697x ◽

1997 ◽

Vol 38 (3) ◽

pp. 393-421 ◽

Cited By ~ 25

Author(s):

PETER R. SCHMIDT

Keyword(s):

Cultural Values ◽

Iron Age ◽

Environmental Changes ◽

Short Review ◽

Deep Time ◽

Ecological History ◽

Forest Exploitation ◽

Iron Smelting ◽

History Of ◽

The Last Two Millennia

Since 1969 archaeological, paleobotanical and ethnographic research in Kagera region, north-western Tanzania (Map 1), have contributed to a deep-time understanding of the ecological history of that region. The primary insight that develops out of this interdisciplinary research is that changes in the ecology of the region can be linked directly to the productive economy and the cultural values of its inhabitants. The development of iron technology and settled agricultural life are the primary components in understanding the environmental changes that arose in this region over the last two millennia or more. This paper provides an overview of the most salient observations derived from this research program. I will begin with a short review of the history of Iron Age settlement, technology and major alterations made to the environment that form the backdrop to the specific reconstructions of forest exploitation gleaned from charcoal excavated from iron-smelting furnaces and from reconstructions of vegetational changes based on palynology.

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Hundreds of nuclear and plastid loci yield insights into orchid relationships

10.1101/2020.11.17.386508 ◽

2020 ◽

Author(s):

Oscar Alejandro Pérez-Escobar ◽

Steven Dodsworth ◽

Diego Bogarín ◽

Sidonie Bellot ◽

Juan A. Balbuena ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Dna Sequences ◽

Phylogenetic Trees ◽

Nuclear Genome ◽

Nuclear Gene ◽

Gene Trees ◽

Deep Time ◽

Plastid Genomes ◽

Phylogenetic Informativeness ◽

History Of ◽

Phylogenetic Framework

ABSTRACTPremise of the studyEvolutionary relationships in the species-rich Orchidaceae have historically relied on organellar DNA sequences and limited taxon sampling. Previous studies provided a robust plastid-maternal phylogenetic framework, from which multiple hypotheses on the drivers of orchid diversification have been derived. However, the extent to which the maternal evolutionary history of orchids is congruent with that of the nuclear genome has remained uninvestigated.MethodsWe inferred phylogenetic relationships from 294 low-copy nuclear genes sequenced/obtained using the Angiosperms353 universal probe set from 75 species representing 69 genera, 16 tribes and 24 subtribes. To test for topological incongruence between nuclear and plastid genomes, we constructed a tree from 78 plastid genes, representing 117 genera, 18 tribes and 28 subtribes and compared them using a co-phylogenetic approach. The phylogenetic informativeness and support of the Angiosperms353 loci were compared with those of the 78 plastid genes.Key ResultsPhylogenetic inferences of nuclear datasets produced highly congruent and robustly supported orchid relationships. Comparisons of nuclear gene trees and plastid gene trees using the latest co-phylogenetic tools revealed strongly supported phylogenetic incongruence in both shallow and deep time. Phylogenetic informativeness analyses showed that the Angiosperms353 genes were in general more informative than most plastid genes.ConclusionsOur study provides the first robust nuclear phylogenomic framework for Orchidaceae plus an assessment of intragenomic nuclear discordance, plastid-nuclear tree incongruence, and phylogenetic informativeness across the family. Our results also demonstrate what has long been known but rarely documented: nuclear and plastid phylogenetic trees are not fully congruent and therefore should not be considered interchangeable.

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Macroevolutionary imprints on the assembly of frugivory networks

10.1101/2020.04.15.042754 ◽

2020 ◽

Author(s):

Gustavo Burin ◽

Paulo R. Guimarães ◽

Tiago B. Quental

Keyword(s):

Interaction Network ◽

Ecological Networks ◽

Species Number ◽

Ecological Communities ◽

Biological Interactions ◽

Deep Time ◽

Interacting Species ◽

History Of ◽

Current Interaction ◽

Biodiversity Changes

Biological interactions are a key aspect of ecological communities (Delmas et al., 2018). Current interaction network structures are snapshots of dynamic processes of community assembly (Thompson, 2005), and represent the product of the evolutionary history of interacting species over millions of years. Thus, assessing the deep time mechanisms affecting the assembly of ecological networks are key to better understand biodiversity changes in broader time scales (Jablonski, 2008). Here we integrate tools from macroevolutionary studies with network science to show that more central species in frugivory networks belong to lineages with higher macroevolutionary stability. This association is more pronounced in warmer, wetter, less seasonal environments, which highlights the role of environmental factors in shaping ecological networks. Furthermore, our results suggest that these environments possess a more diverse (either in species number or ecology) assemblage of species that can be sorted during network assembly. Lastly, we found evidence that the macro-evolutionary contribution to network stability changes in geographical space. This reinforces the idea that the macroevolutionary sorting mechanism acts at the regional pool of species, rather than selecting absolute paces of diversification. Hence our results suggest an interplay between ecological roles and diversification regimes in shaping the fate of lineages of plants and seed dispersing birds.

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Deep time diversity and the early radiations of birds

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences ◽

10.1073/pnas.2019865118 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 118 (10) ◽

pp. e2019865118

Author(s):

Yilun Yu ◽

Chi Zhang ◽

Xing Xu

Keyword(s):

Evolutionary History ◽

Large Scale ◽

Evolutionary Rate ◽

Rapid Evolution ◽

Morphological Data ◽

Deep Time ◽

The Third ◽

Time Diversity ◽

History Of

Reconstructing the history of biodiversity has been hindered by often-separate analyses of stem and crown groups of the clades in question that are not easily understood within the same unified evolutionary framework. Here, we investigate the evolutionary history of birds by analyzing three supertrees that combine published phylogenies of both stem and crown birds. Our analyses reveal three distinct large-scale increases in the diversification rate across bird evolutionary history. The first increase, which began between 160 and 170 Ma and reached its peak between 130 and 135 Ma, corresponds to an accelerated morphological evolutionary rate associated with the locomotory systems among early stem birds. This radiation resulted in morphospace occupation that is larger and different from their close dinosaurian relatives, demonstrating the occurrence of a radiation among early stem birds. The second increase, which started ∼90 Ma and reached its peak between 65 and 55 Ma, is associated with rapid evolution of the cranial skeleton among early crown birds, driven differently from the first radiation. The third increase, which occurred after ∼40 to 45 Ma, has yet to be supported by quantitative morphological data but gains some support from the fossil record. Our analyses indicate that the bird biodiversity evolution was influenced mainly by long-term climatic changes and also by major paleobiological events such as the Cretaceous–Paleogene (K–Pg) extinction.

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Past as Prophecy: Indigenous Diplomacies beyond Liberal Settler Regimes of Recognition, as Told in Shell

Religions ◽

10.3390/rel10090510 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 10 (9) ◽

pp. 510

Author(s):

Lee Bloch

Keyword(s):

Ways Of Knowing ◽

Community Members ◽

Us South ◽

State Recognition ◽

Temporal Differences ◽

Indigenous Knowledges ◽

The Us ◽

History Of ◽

Indigenous Ways Of Knowing

According to a prophecy told in a small, Muskogee-identified community in the US South, the seeds of Indigenous ways of knowing and relating to more-than-human kin will once again flourish in the ruins of colonial orders. Even settlers will be forced to turn to Indigenous knowledges because “they have destroyed everything else”. Following this visionary history-future, this article asks how Indigenous diplomacies and temporalities animate resurgent possibilities for making life within the fractures (and apocalyptic ruins) of settler states. This demands a rethinking of the global and the international from the perspective of deep Indigenous histories. I draw on research visiting ancestral landscapes with community members, discussing a trip to an ancient shell mound and a contemporary cemetery in which shells are laid atop grave plots. These stories evoke a long-term history of shifting and multivalient shell use across religious and temporal differences. They speak to practices of acknowledgement that exceed liberal settler regimes of state recognition and extend from much older diplomatic practices.

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Towards a New Vision for Australian Politics

The Oxford Handbook of Australian Politics ◽

10.1093/oxfordhb/9780198805465.013.34 ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

Anne Tiernan

Keyword(s):

Time History ◽

Deep Time ◽

European Settlement ◽

Relative Success ◽

Australian Continent ◽

Political Studies ◽

Political Traditions ◽

History Of ◽

Thematic Approach ◽

New Vision

Australian politics is often characterized as derivative, pragmatic, and utilitarian—as insufficiently interesting or important to devote much time to. This Handbook challenges that contention, arguing it reflects a narrow, colonial perspective and ignores the richness and diversity of the deep-time history of the Australian continent and the unique inheritance the blending of Australia’s many histories and traditions has produced. Australian political studies encompasses a broad family of research disciplines, whose diverse and methodologically plural efforts have transformed our understanding of Aboriginal cultures and of European settlement. This volume’s thematic approach captures the politics, policies, and societies that have evolved in Australia’s many different landscapes and places. Its chapters present a theoretically rigorous, empirically informed, and historically nuanced account of what is distinctive about Australian politics, its capacity for democratic innovation and what accounts (its many shortcomings notwithstanding), for the resilience of its political traditions and Australia’s relative success.

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Lifespan, growth rate, and body size across latitude in marine Bivalvia, with implications for Phanerozoic evolution

Proceedings of The Royal Society B Biological Sciences ◽

10.1098/rspb.2016.1364 ◽

2016 ◽

Vol 283 (1836) ◽

pp. 20161364 ◽

Cited By ~ 36

Author(s):

David K. Moss ◽

Linda C. Ivany ◽

Emily J. Judd ◽

Patrick W. Cummings ◽

Claire E. Bearden ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Growth Rate ◽

Body Size ◽

Shell Growth ◽

Size Variation ◽

Marine Animals ◽

Deep Time ◽

Global Database ◽

Ecological History ◽

Marine Bivalves ◽

History Of

Mean body size in marine animals has increased more than 100-fold since the Cambrian, a discovery that brings to attention the key life-history parameters of lifespan and growth rate that ultimately determine size. Variation in these parameters is not well understood on the planet today, much less in deep time. Here, we present a new global database of maximum reported lifespan and shell growth coupled with body size data for 1 148 populations of marine bivalves and show that (i) lifespan increases, and growth rate decreases, with latitude, both across the group as a whole and within well-sampled species, (ii) growth rate, and hence metabolic rate, correlates inversely with lifespan, and (iii) opposing trends in lifespan and growth combined with high variance obviate any demonstrable pattern in body size with latitude. Our observations suggest that the proposed increase in metabolic activity and demonstrated increase in body size of organisms over the Phanerozoic should be accompanied by a concomitant shift towards faster growth and/or shorter lifespan in marine bivalves. This prediction, testable from the fossil record, may help to explain one of the more fundamental patterns in the evolutionary and ecological history of animal life on this planet.

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