Credit: Yale Unive.
Elizabeth VRBA’s fossil and careful study of living mammals challenged the traditional approach to development. Instead of a process of slow, continuous adaptive changes operated by natural selection, he added episodes of rapidly extinction of species and formation in the environment. She is known as a rigorous and creative contributor for the development of macroevoluctionary theory – the origin of species and high groups and the evolutionary fate. She is dead at the age of 82.
VRBA was born in Hamburg, Germany. After the death of his father, his family moved to a lamb in 1944 in South West Africa (now Namibia). He received PhD in Zoology and Palliantology at Cape Town University in South Africa in 1974, in which his research focuses on fossil bovids. In 1969, he began working in the Transwal Museum, Pretoria, which grew as its Deputy Director from 1977 to 1986.
VRBA exploded the scientific world stage at a macroevolution meeting in Chicago, Illinois in 1980. Till then, she was mostly unknown to the American peliantologist. How life developed, a draft of its provocative paper on it (S Vraba S. Afr. J. Science. 7661–84; 1980), Which was sent to me and at least another researcher in the United States inspired me-to invite them to speak as a co-organizer. As he said, he was “armed with the brand of a balanced balance here”.
In 1972, the principle of balance was proposed by me and Stephen J. Gold was proposed. We argued that most of the species in fossil records remain unchanged for a long time, which sometimes leads to rapid changes in branches, developing new species.
VRBA found a way to squeeze insight from the barren lines of phylognetic diagrams in our understanding of evolutionary processes. Focusing on fossil deer, he did two evolutionary lineage. One, Emplas, has only two species in the last six million years, since Miosine. Others, wildbast, hertebest and others, incorporate at least 27 species at the same time.
Esthela Bargere Leopold (1927–2024), passionate environmentalists who discovered changing ecosystems
The Empalas exploits a wide range of ecological conditions, while the Wildbast dynasty has several grasslands experts. The VRBA argued that the width of the niche that a species that a species can occupy the rates of speculation and extinction, the environment is the mainstream of this development. His ‘influence hypothesis’ proposed that clear directional trends in development are the accumulation of increasing expertise within the lineage of narrow-low species-a phenomenon that he later referred to as pruning of the species-and not necessarily manifestations of the selection of species.
By the time she addressed the macroevolution meeting, the conference evolved into a referendum on the puncture balance by the conference – and she quickly became the star of the show. Science writer Roger Levin highlighted his work, which included two figures of his 1980 paper, as well as with an image of Charles Darwin, in his five-five review of the event in science (R. Levin Science 210883-887; 1980), Which he described as “one of the most important conferences on evolutionary biology for more than 30 years”.
‘Exaptation’ is another original VRBA concept. A boycott is a feature that is co-died to serve an additional function, for which it has developed originally. For example, African Black Heron feathers (Dryness)) It is not only used for flight, but also to make a umbrella, putting a shade on shallow water, where the fish collects and is easy to hunt. The concept has captured the imaginations of many evolutionary biologists.
