Scenarios: Why?

Abstract

In beginning this symposium on the patterns disclosed by primitive fishes, we should perhaps ask what it is that we are trying to achieve. Some of us hope to generate schemes for the taxonomic placement of certain Recent animals and for mapping the shifting pattern of their phenotypes through time. However, another part of our agenda might involve the generation of scenarios, i.e efforts to reconstruct the functional changes producing the process of vertebrate evolution. Obviously, there are two sets of evidence that can be used to achieve these aims. The first derives from fossils and was emphasized in the previous symposium. The second derives from the Recent and is the topic here.