ABSTRACT
This essay summarizes a sea-change in understanding of the known history of life, its remarkable extension during the past 50 years to incorporate the earliest 85% of life’s existence – the so-called “missing” early fossil record, regarded by some as the “greatest unsolved problem in Natural Science.” Indeed, the 1965 breakthrough discoveries flew in the face of the long-accepted dogma that life’s formative stages were not only unknown but were presumed unknowable, a view universally accepted since the mid-1800s writings of Charles Darwin. This narrative, written from the perspective of J. William (Bill) Schopf – a witnessing participant and last survivor of the handful of workers involved in the breakthrough mid-1960s discoveries – outlines the path taken by this major advance, a complicated mix of past insights, new discoveries, cultural and political biases, and personality-dependent human interactions that documents its trek from disbelief to doubt to grudging then widespread acceptance. Written at the urging of philosopher Tom Kuhn, author of the classic 1962 volume on The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, the narrative elucidates the personality and values of a motivating linchpin and how the new discoveries led to the establishment of the sciences of Precambrian Paleobiology and Astrobiology.
