Uniting Natural History with the Molecular Sciences. The Ultimate Multidisciplinarity

Life and the Earth have coevolved over the past four billion years to deliver a rich diversity of biological structure, from biomolecules to macrophysiology. One grand challenge seeks to interconnect these structures, in ways acceptable to both natural historians and physical scientists, to give an interconnecting web of models and experiments to create a planetary understanding of the phenomenon that we call "life". The molecular scientist wants experiments; the natural historian wants reference to Darwinian fitness. Paleogenetics offers both.