Conway Morris is based in the Department of Earth Sciences at the University of Cambridge and is best known for his work on the Cambrian explosion, the Burgess Shale fossil fauna and similar deposits in China and Greenland. In addition to working in these countries he has undertaken research in Australia, Canada, Mongolia and the United States. His studies on the Burgess Shale-type faunas, as well as the early evolution of skeletons, has encompassed a wide variety of groups, ranging from ctenophores to the earliest vertebrates. His thinking on the significance of the Burgess Shale has evolved and his current interest in evolutionary convergence and its wider significance – the topic of his 2007 Gifford Lectures – was in part spurred by Stephen Jay Gould's arguments for the importance of contingency in the history of life.
In January 2017, his team announced the discovery of Saccorhytus and initially described it as an early member of the deuterostomes which contain a diverse group of animals including vertebrates,[6][7] but subsequent analysis reclassified this taxon as a member of the protostomes, probably within the ecdysozoans.[8]
Burgess Shale
Conway Morris' views on the Burgess Shale are reported in numerous technical papers and more generally in The Crucible of Creation (Oxford University Press, 1998). In recent years he has been investigating the phenomenon of evolutionary convergence, the main thesis of which is put forward in Life's Solution: Inevitable Humans in a Lonely Universe (Cambridge University Press, 2003). He is now involved on a major project to investigate both the scientific ramifications of convergence and also to establish a website (www.mapoflife.org) that aims to provide an easily accessible introduction to the thousands of known examples of convergence. This work is funded by the John Templeton Foundation.
Evolution, science and religion
Conway Morris is active in the public understanding of science and has broadcast extensively on radio and television. The latter includes the Royal Institution Christmas Lectures delivered in 1996. A Christian, he has participated in science and religion debates, including arguments against intelligent design on the one hand and materialism on the other. In 2005 he gave the second Boyle Lecture.[9] He has lectured at the Faraday Institute for Science and Religion on "Evolution and fine-tuning in Biology".[10] He gave the University of Edinburgh Gifford Lectures for 2007 in a series titled "Darwin's Compass: How Evolution Discovers the Song of Creation".[11] In these lectures Conway Morris explained why evolution is compatible with belief in the existence of a God.[12]
That satisfactory definitions of life elude us may be one hint that when materialists step forward and declare with a brisk slap of the hands that this is it, we should be deeply skeptical. Whether the "it" be that of Richard Dawkins' reductionist gene-centred worldpicture, the "universal acid" of Daniel Dennett's meaningless Darwinism, or David Sloan Wilson's faith in group selection (not least to explain the role of human religions), we certainly need to acknowledge each provides insights but as total explanations of what we see around us they are, to put it politely, somewhat incomplete.[9]
the scientist who boomingly – and they always boom – declares that those who believe in the Deity are unavoidably crazy, "cracked" as my dear father would have said, although I should add that I have every reason to believe he was – and now hope is – on the side of the angels.[9]
The Early Evolution of Metazoa and the Significance of Problematic Taxa. (ed., with Alberto M. Simonetta) Cambridge University Press, 1991. ISBN0-521-40242-5
The Crucible of Creation: The Burgess Shale and the Rise of Animals. Oxford University Press. 1998. ISBN0-19-850256-7.
Fitness of the Cosmos for Life: Biochemistry and Fine-Tuning. (ed., with John D. Barrow, Stephen J. Freeland, Charles L. Harper, Jr.) Cambridge University Press, 2008. ISBN978-0-521-87102-0
^"News & Events". The University of Edinburgh. Archived from the original on 9 April 2008. Retrieved 20 February 2010.
^The points cited are taken from the official abstracts of the "Gifford Lectures 2006 –"(PDF). University of Edinburgh. Archived from the original(PDF) on 20 March 2007. Retrieved 20 February 2010.