It was great to see the most recent Ediacaran evidence! Especially the Nama assemblages. Thank you for posting!

This was a wonderful talk, thank you very much!

Thank you Professor Xiao. A fascinating presentation.

Thanks for the presentation! It deserves many more views and likes.

I've only recently found this series and am thoroughly enjoying it! As an aside I have very fond childhood memories of many, many, visits to the Natural History Museum in London, walking around in wide-eyed wonder at the exhibits. I can't begin to express the depth of horror and disappointment I felt the last couple of times I visited as an adult - the utter ruination of a once great institution! Entire halls given over to rank upon rank of cuddly toys, many exhibits gone, God knows where, the remnants crammed in to corners and then covered up by idiot 'multimedia experiences'... and don't get me started on the Darwin Centre, what a spectacular waste of money, as is that monstrosity of an escalator that serves as a rear entrance while looking like one too - The irony considering what one is about to be introduced to these days! More, with everything now so crowded together moving around the museum is worse than a busy day in Ikea and rather more disappointing! The only part of the whole place that hasn't been utterly ruined is the minerals hall and as that obviously hasn't been touched in 30+ years I suspect i's only because nobody there cares enough to get a bulldozer up the stairs! Why the rant? About 10 years ago, shortly after my initial horror at the crimes perpetrated at the London Natural History Museum, I happened to stumble across the Oxford Museum of Natural History and was greatly cheered - Well presented (ie: you could see them!) 'genuine' exhibits with plenty of room to move about and appreciate the place. If I wanted to know more all I had to do was read the generally well-written plaques attached to each exhibit, and nothing was covered with meaningless flashing lights that only serve to distract from the sources of wonder that are the whole reason public access to museums exists! Given this awful trend for replacing the 'genuine article' with "Sound and Fury; Signifying Nothing" it was a real pleasure - I haven't had the chance to go back, sadly to some extent I daren't! Please tell me the Oxford Museum has kept the cultural Vandals from the gate!

Great talk, thanks.

Excellent presentation.

Two things: One goes to the White Sea to look at fossils, because they are there :3 Also, I found it hilarious that people's roof tiles have been inspected via binoculars; it makes sense, but was unexpected. The whole presentation was was well put together. I found some new cues.

I feel educated. The Cyberman vibes in the beginning are a bit disturbing-tho.

Prof. Xiao's English is way better than my Chinese, but I find it funny that him saying "... million years" rather sounds like "... many years" to me.

Interesting choice to use the ctenophore first divergence model I wonder why that one was preferentially chosen as it is generally considered more controversial. Is it possibly related to the hypothesis that some sponges are more closely related to eumetazoans than other sponges?(which was later challenged) Also I noticed the lack of mention of the somewhat suggestive sponge fossils namely the claim for finding evidence of spicules in the Tonian or the claim of finding a Sponge in end Marinoan glaciation cap carbonates? Have those been debunked or were they just considered to ambiguous to warrant mention?

Looks like puyi, last emperor

Very clever, adding animal proteins to the onion soup!

i imagine first animals floated. now lets watch the video

Why no net over the cooking pot?

Excellent presentation and review of discoveries. Mathematical Physics of The Butterfly Effect evolving from 0-1-2-3-4-etc exponentiation-ness sequences via the e-Pi-i sync-duration Principle is apparent in Math-Phys-Chem and Geometrical Drawing Resonances MODULES of AM-FM Communication In-form-ation Tuned integration of pulse-evolution life, that is recognised by Palentological snapshots of this natural self-defining measuring system of complex combination and permutations of harmonic/anharmonic resonance in mass-energy-momentum In-form-ation. (With some Intuitive experience) There are many suggestions for the development of bivalve structures along with the other bilaterally symmetric forms? Ie many forms radiated in development and filled the niche of oxygenated layers in the Biological (Quantum-fields Clocking) Material environment. The last question regarding a 2->3D transition is focusing on the relevant physical significance of what you would expect to happen when a heavily restricted environment is released by the melting of a global ice-sheet. It fits the Punctuated Equilibrium scenario very well.

LOL what you get in Burger king

The topics are so interesting on this channel but the format sux. Poor video and audio quality and just some professor meandering on about their favourite subject. Which is ok, I've seen a couple now but I would prefer less a facetime/lecture thing and more actual production from your end, do you even edit?

I think I would have to disagree with Dr. Xiao's conclusion about Darwin (everything else was quite interesting and quite instructive). The problem is the Ediacaran fossil record. Although it would be mind-blowing to Darwin in some respects it would be a big disappointment in others. By that I mean there are no intermediate forms of life that comply with Darwin's origin of species. So from what did the Cambrian life forms descend? I don't think that anybody ever said there was no life before the Cambrian explosion. What was remarked is that this seems to be the first example of complex life. All of this life MUST be traceable back to ancestral forms (intermediate forms). So far those forms are missing in the fossil record. More to the point, the amount of time between the Ediacaran life forms and the Cambrian life forms seems far too small to account for all the possible intermediate stages required to explain the Cambrian Explosion. We are still missing a key to explain this phenomenon. The one thing I wish Dr. Xiao would have discussed is sex. Could it be that motility came into being when differentiation due to sex entered the life cycle? I think it was taken as a given that in the early Ediacaran, life propagated by spores being release into the water. It works I suppose but if diversity is part of the story of how life evolved then being able to leave your location to find a mate, miles away, definitely makes sure that diversity can (will?) happen.

So you seem to have bypassed the origins please explain the first cells and how this were formed

funny how he sounds asian one moment and australian the next :)

Ugh, unpleasant audio. One would think the desire to transmit this information would motivate doing it more competently.