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Heterochrony: beyond words

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 May 2016

Michael L. McKinney
Michael L. McKinney*
Affiliation:
Department of Geological Sciences, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, Tennessee 37996. E-mail: mmckinne@utk.edu
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Extract

“It's not all heterochrony.” Raff (1996)

“Heterochrony … explains everything.” McNamara (1997)

Few evolutionary topics have generated more confusion and controversy than heterochrony. Commonly defined as “evolution via change in rate or timing of development,” heterchrony has historically become associated with genocidal ideologies, simple-minded theories of evolution, and a bloated, baroque jargon describing patterns produced by largely unknown mechanisms. With a track record like that, perhaps the most surprising aspect of heterochrony is its continued, even rapid, growth as an area of productive scientific inquiry. For example, the number of papers devoted to heterochronic topics continues to increase in many evolutionary journals and books (reviews in Reilly et al. 1997; Klingenberg 1998), including those devoted to human development (Bogin 1997) and evolution (Vrba 1998; McKinney 1998; Parker and McKinney 1999).

Information

Type
Matters of the Record
Information
Paleobiology , Volume 25 , Issue 2 , Spring 1999 , pp. 149 - 153
Copyright
Copyright © The Paleontological Society 

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References

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