Abstract
IN 1917, there was inaugurated at the Cawthron Institute of Scientific Research, Nelson, New Zealand, an annual lecture to commemorate the generosity and foresight of the founder of the Institute, Thomas Cawthron. Each year since then, with the exception of 1931, the Cawthron Lecture has given a distinguished investigator an opportunity of setting before the public the results of progress in some particular branch of knowledge. The lecturer of 1935 was Dr. R. J. Tillyard, his subject “Tracing the Dawn of Life Further Backwards”. In following the conditions of life in geological epochs from the present to the earliest times, he discussed briefly the outstanding products of each age. The climax of his story was the statement that in Pre-Cambrian rocks, belonging to the Middle Proterozoic series of Tree Gully near Adelaide, the late Prof. David and he had discovered remains which he had described (in a paper shortly to be published) as belonging to a new class of Arthropods, differing from all other arthropods in having the segments of the head freely articulated.
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Tracing the Dawn of Life. Nature 137, 269 (1936). https://doi.org/10.1038/137269a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/137269a0