When the voyage to evaluate P-L5 had been announced, you hadn’t been able to resist signing on. It had been a long-running family joke that Great-Grandpa Jim had depopulated an entire planet in his younger days by hanging a fish outside the mayor' s bedroom window. With your background in crowd psychology you could understand how such a joke could send an aging boom town packing. By the time Grandpa Jim was born, P-L5 was a has-been planet. Years of murky water, "critter sightings" and poor advertising decisions had turned the once booming tourist trap into one big vacancy. Townsfolk had already started leaving for brighter, busier planets, selling their businesses and homes to a financing company. When Great-Grandpa hung one of those big funny-looking fish that used to wash up on shore, the townspeople decided they had had it.
This planet didn’t sound too dangerous in Grandpa’s stories, but to you it looked downright eerie. Something was obviously going on here and the sea water was turning brown with chemicals. Not only that, but this planet was definitely "hot," and the radioactivity might be speeding up evolution. Geological forces similar to Earth’s might be awakening, and who knows what was crawling around down there. The sooner everybody left the better-and tomorrow you would tell them so.
Leads and Sources
Magazines and Articles:
"When Life Exploded," J. Madeleine Nash. Cover Story Time Magazine December 4, 1995.
"On Embryos and Ancestors," Stephen Jay Gould. Natural History 7/98-8/98, p. 20.
"The Evolution of Life on the Earth," Stephen Jay Gould. Scientific American October 1994, p. 85.
"Breathing Room for Early Animals" (Oxygen), Andrew H. Knoll. Nature Vol. 382, July 11, 1996, p. 111.
"The Big Bang of Animal Evolution," Jeffrey Levinton. Scientific American November 1992.
"Hypersea," Dianna and Mark McMenamin. Discover October 1995, p. 76.
"The Emergence of Animals," Mark McMenamin. Scientific American April 1987, p. 94.
"Life’s Grand Explosions." (theories on why the Cambrian explosion occurred), Lori Oliwenstein. Discover January 1996, p. 42.
"The Molecular Explosion," Henry Gee. Nature Vol. 373, February 16,1995, p. 558.
Internet Sites:
The Divisions of Precambrian Time
http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/precambrian/precambrian.htmlLife of the Vendian
http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/vendian/vendianlife.htmlLearning About the Vendian Animals
http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/vendian/critters.htmlOxygen Pulse and the Evolutionary Expansion of the Metazoans
http://www.geocities.com/CapeCanaveral/Hangar/8200/Oxygenation.htmlCambrian Explosion
http://www.carleton.ca/Museum/camex/1ahome.html
Books:
The Emergence of Animals: The Cambrian Breakthrough. Mark and Dianna McMenamin, 1990, Columbia University Press.
Biology: The Science of Life. Wallace, Sanders and Ferl, 4th ed., 1996, Addison-Wesley.