Episode 74: Professor Simon Conway Morris, palaeontologist at the University of Cambridge

Professor Simon Conway Morris is a groundbreaking palaeontologist at the University of Cambridge. He is internationally recognised for his pioneering research on the Cambrian explosion and his meticulous analysis of the Burgess Shale fauna. These studies have significantly reshaped our understanding of the early evolution of animal body plans and the dynamics of evolutionary innovation. Conway Morris’s most distinctive contribution is the articulation and empirical substantiation of evolutionary convergence—the recurrence of similar biological forms and behaviours across vastly different evolutionary lineages. Through a vast body of scholarship and in his popular books Life’s Solution (2003), The Runes of Evolution (2015), and From Extraterrestrials to Animal Minds (2022), he has shown that evolutionary pathways may be far more constrained and directional than previously assumed.