Simon Conway Morris (born 1951) is an English palaeontologist, evolutionary biologist, and astrobiologist known for his study of the fossils of the Burgess Shale and the Cambrian explosion. The results of these discoveries were celebrated in Stephen Jay Gould's 1989 book Wonderful Life. Conway Morris's own book on the subject, The Crucible of Creation (1998), however, is critical of Gould's presentation and interpretation. Conway Morris, a Christian, holds to theistic views of biological evolution. He has held the Chair of Evolutionary Palaeobiology in the Department of Earth Sciences, University of Cambridge since 1995. Biography Early years Conway Morris was born on 6 November 1951. A native of Carshalton, Surrey, he was brought up in London, England. and went on to study geology at Bristol University, achieving a First Class Honours degree. He then moved to Cambridge University and completed a PhD at St John's College under Harry Blackmore Whittington. He is professor of evolutionary palaeobiology in the Department of Earth Sciences at Cambridge. He is renowned for his insights into early evolution and his studies of paleobiology. He gave the Royal Institution Christmas Lecture in 1996 on the subject of The History in our Bones. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society at age 39, was awarded the Walcott Medal of the National Academy of Sciences in 1987 and the Lyell Medal of the Geological Society of London in 1998. Work Conway Morris is based in the Department of Earth Sciences at the University of Cambridge and is best known for his work on the Cambrian explosion, the Burgess Shale fossil fauna and similar deposits in China and Greenland. In addition to working in these countries he has undertaken research in Australia, Canada, Mongolia and the United States. His studies on the Burgess Shale-type faunas, as well as the early evolution of skeletons, has encompassed a wide variety of groups, ranging from ctenophores to the earliest vertebrates. His thinking on the significance of the Burgess Shale has evolved and his current interest in evolutionary convergence and its wider significance – the topic of his 2007 Gifford Lectures – was in part spurred by Stephen Jay Gould's arguments for the importance of contingency in the history of life. In January 2017 his team announced the discovery of an early ancestor of vertebrates, a bag-like sea creature, which lived about 540 million years ago. Burgess Shale Conway Morris' views on