Paleontology has come a long way in this last century with discoveries that have expanded our knowledge of the history of earth.  We begin to understand the scope of time and the significance of human's place on earth.

Multicellular animals made their first uncontested appearance in the fossil record about 570 million years ago with the Cambrian explosion.  The Burgess Shale is from a period just after this appearance.  Gould maintained that this single quarry exceeded in anatomical range  the entire spectrum of invertebrate life in today's oceans.  He maintains evolution is not a tree with life branching out from a common trunk but is littered with many dead ends.

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He pervasively suggests that we need some self reflection about our place in the world.

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We do need to rethink everything.  We perceive that we are the dominant species but in geologic time, that dominance is fragile.  If we want to endure as a species we must respect the balance and interplay of all systems that maintain the narrow range that we thrive in.