— What activities do you enjoy doing together?
— We really enjoy sitting on the balcony and having a cup of tea or coffee.
— From here we can see the Kremlin and the "golden brains" of the Academy of Sciences. Over there on Leninsky Avenue. I can even show you through binoculars from this balcony. And over there you can see Sokolniki. And there's the Ostankino Tower.
— And in the mornings during breakfast we like to argue, throwing test tubes at each other. 
— We have intense scientific debates in the kitchen. Sometimes they even lead to fights and hurt feelings.

— Why are there test tubes in your kitchen? Do you have a home lab? 
— Well, we do have some test tubes. 
— We always bring something home from work. 
— There are probably live flies on the windowsill right now. And Lena always has some Trichoplax floating around. 
— I've got lots of things floating around. There are also some dried scorpions. In short, we have plenty to throw at each other.

— Wait, that's not how I pictured our interview would start! I have a list of all these different facts about you. Alexander Markov. Doctor of Biology. Paleontologist. Leading researcher at the Paleontological Museum. Recipient of the main Russian award in the field of popular science literature. Laureate of the for Loyalty to Science Prize. Contributor to the development of the general theory of biological macroevolution and mathematical modeling of macroevolutionary processes. 
Author of 200 scientific papers and numerous popular science publications, including well-known books co-authored with Elena Naimark, who also has around 100 publications, if I'm not mistaken. You both are also the creators of Elementy.ru and founders of the Problemy Evolyutsii (Questions on Evolutions) portal. Anyway, after reading all this, I'm wondering where you find the time to do so much. You must have some secret, and now I'm going to discover and implement it. 
— Well, since Lena is quiet, I'll start. Lena is indeed hyperactive. She can multitask and is always busy. She has a multitude of projects, all essential and interesting. She's like a very peaceful tank. So it doesn't surprise me at all when Lena manages to do everything. I, on the other hand, can't multitask at all. Such situations demotivate me greatly. And actually, everything you've listed is a thing of the past. It's not my life at the moment  but something I achieved when I was younger. 
— Let me interrupt you. That's not true, because Sasha does everything in an extraordinary way. He first takes a long time to think things over. It takes him some time to contemplate a project and anything else he wants to do. And it seems like he's not doing anything during that time. But that's not the case! He considers the problem from all angles, mentally choosing the shortest and most effective path. And then he suddenly begins to act! It seems to happen out of nowhere, but I know for a fact that it was preceded by very careful and quite lengthy consideration. But once he has thought everything through and focused on the problem, he's like an arrow.
He always succeeds because his actions are preceded by very careful and thorough consideration. That's why everything he does is highly effective. That's Alexander's secret. My secret is completely different because I want everything everywhere all at once. I'm interested in everything at once. And I'm like... 
— Like Napoleon. 
— Like a canister shot, I'll hit at least something. 

— It's like Napoleon's "One jumps into the fray, then figures out what to do next," right? 
— Well, I engage in many battles at once. I have at least three projects going on right now, all incredibly fascinating. If I were Alexander, I would focus on just one of them very carefully. As you can see, we operate in completely different ways. But we probably complement each other to some extent. 

— Wait, what do you mean by "just one"? You're both probably also writing a book, among other things. I read in your interview a couple of years ago that you promised to write a book about paleontology. 
— That was a long time ago. I've already forgotten about it. 
— It's on my mind, but there is so much scientific work going on at the moment that I can't get around to it... 
— In fact, our colleague and friend Professor Andrey Zhuravlev recently published a wonderful book on invertebrate paleontology. The book is so good that after reading it, I decided there was no point in us doing the same thing. 

— I thought you were going to cover a broader topic, because invertebrate paleontology isn't all the paleontology there is, right? 
— Well, we don't know much about vertebrate paleontology. It's invertebrates we're more or less competent in. 
— We're wary of writing on topics we're not well versed in. 
— Dinosaurs aren't our thing. 
— The likelihood of us messing up is 100%. 

— Let's then talk about your topics. You studied sea urchins a long time ago. I remember it well. You had herring and saffron cod in your PhD thesis, right? And what about now? 
— I don't know where to start. It'll be a long list if I name all the topics on which I have, say, published research articles. And then there are topics that I've thought a lot about and that I'm terribly interested in, but I haven't published anything on them. 


— I'm more curious about the process. How do you transition from one subject to another?
I'm more curious about the process. How do you transition from one subject to another?
— By necessity, I possess a breadth of knowledge. Initially, until I was around 35, my focus was quite narrow and included only paleontology, the Paleontological Institute, and the pool of ideas that were emerging within our very limited circle. Then, in the early 2000s, I unexpectedly had to familiarize myself with various aspects of molecular biology, genetics, proteins, enzymes, genes, and other things I had no prior knowledge of, and this significantly broadened my viewpoint. Following that, also in the early 2000s, I began to communicate and promote science. I started writing books and later delivering lectures, and in 2014, I was invited to join the Faculty of Biology at MSU. There, I teach evolutionary biology and the theory of evolution to the entire cohort. As a result, I constantly have to contemplate all facets of evolutionary biology while preparing lectures and updating them annually. 
And occasionally, while pondering a certain question, an idea strikes me as interesting and as a prelude to a potential hypothesis. And it's something that can be verified! So it's both an idea and a concept of how to implement it. And it's something I can undertake. 

— But how difficult is it? There are scientists who spend their entire lives focusing on one subject and have an exhaustive understanding of it from every angle. And that might not necessarily be a good thing. 
— They often become quite dogmatic. By necessity, I possess a breadth of knowledge. Initially, until I was around 35, my focus was quite narrow and included only paleontology, the Paleontological Institute, and the pool of ideas that were emerging within our very limited circle. Then, in the early 2000s, I unexpectedly had to familiarize myself with various aspects of molecular biology, genetics, proteins, enzymes, genes, and other things I had no prior knowledge of, and this significantly broadened my viewpoint. Following that, also in the early 2000s, I began to communicate and promote science. I started writing books and later delivering lectures, and in 2014, I was invited to join the Faculty of Biology at MSU. There, I teach evolutionary biology and the theory of evolution to the entire cohort. As a result, I constantly have to contemplate all facets of evolutionary biology while preparing lectures and updating them annually. 
And occasionally, while pondering a certain question, an idea strikes me as interesting and as a prelude to a potential hypothesis. And it's something that can be verified! So it's both an idea and a concept of how to implement it. And it's something I can undertake. 

— But how difficult is it? There are scientists who spend their entire lives focusing on one subject and have an exhaustive understanding of it from every angle. And that might not necessarily be a good thing. 
— They often become quite dogmatic.

— That does happen. Still, they have a deep understanding of their field. Then suddenly comes a new person who doesn't know the subject as well. How difficult is it to step into something new if you haven't spent your entire life there? 
— Very! I'm currently exploring an unexpected and extremely intriguing topic. A few years ago, I received a call from Irkutsk informing me that they had discovered some peculiar animals they wanted to send to me, which they did. Last year, I finally had the chance to examine them. Upon closer inspection, I discovered they were ancestors of sea scorpions, which I knew nothing about. I had only seen illustrations. So I had to delve into a new topic simply because I had this obviously very important material, the very first chelicerae on the planet. They're here with me. I mean, what am I to do? I know nothing about them. I'm familiar with some adjacent topics, the Cambrian and arthropods in general. However, there are sea scorpion specialists who have dedicated their lives to studying them. They keep publishing detailed studies about their legs, their antennae, their structure... They even celebrate when they find another fragment of an antenna! 
They also theorize about their breathing and feeding habits. Basically, they delve into the minutiae. I had to immerse myself in this topic from scratch, all by myself. On one hand, it's a good thing because it's what I wanted. On the other hand, I desperately wished I had their expertise! I wished I had someone beside me who could point out the details, like "This is a tendril," "This is the second plate from the fourth tergum," and so on. 
— But thankfully, no one was actually there. Because the predecessors were mistaken, and Lena discovered it. 

— That's awesome! But why didn't you send it to the experts when you realized it was something interesting but not your topic per se? 
— Here's the thing, in our Paleontological Institute and in our country in general, there was only one specialist on these animals. Sadly, he has passed away. So I wrote to my colleagues in Germany, who said they would help, but first I needed to provide a description in English. But to provide a description, you need to understand what you're looking at. And I didn't understand. So I ended up in a catch-22 situation and had to figure everything out myself. And by the time I figured it out, I no longer needed my German colleagues. As for Russia, we don't have any sea scorpion specialists in our country. 

— Now you have, apparently. 
— Now we do. 
— Chasmataspidida are more like sea scorpion ancestors. There are probably only ten people in the world who know who they are. 
— This is an example of how you sometimes have to dive into something new. I mean, what other options are there? And also, you need courage to venture into the unknown. Without courage, there would be no scientific discoveries. 

— When Elena was sent something, she seized it, mastered it, and became one of the ten world experts on the subject. What about you, Alexander? Is your experience similar? 
— I tend to jump from one topic to another. I find it most enjoyable to theorize using computer modeling. Say, you come up with an evolutionary idea. For instance, how and why mitosis, meiosis, and sexual reproduction could have emerged from certain preconditions. The origin of eukaryotes. And you start exploring this idea. There is no actual material and there won't be, so you start testing the idea itself using computer modeling. I have done a few works like this. I really enjoy it. I usually do this in collaboration with a good programmer. For example, our son Mikhail is an excellent programmer. We have done several such works together. It's not his main job, though. He helps out and writes programs as a hobby. This is a kind of evolutionary modeling work that tests purely theoretical, abstract ideas. For example, I liked an article from around 2006 or 2007 that had a simple model of brain evolution and the evolution of some abstract human beings. I liked the idea and spent the next ten or so years mulling it over. 
— That's exactly what I was talking about. [Both laugh.] 
— I described this model in the second volume of Human Evolution, in the chapter Sociality and Intelligence, I believe. The one that talks about the theory that human intelligence developed primarily in connection with sociality, relationships within society, etc. I suggested to Misha that we create a program to explore this idea. He did, and we started getting some results. And then I read a book that joyfully informed me that this idea had already been conceived, people were already working on it, and it even had a name! After carefully reading the book and a few others on the topic, I realized where our work was original and what we had done that others have not, and we're now advancing this topic. We've even published articles in scientific peer-reviewed journals on a topic that can be called Cultural Drive, Co-Evolution of Brain and Culture, or Cultural Evolution, whichever you prefer. 

— I'm not an expert. I don't really understand how you can build a working model if there is no material to build it on. 
— Just like they do in the exact sciences, such as math. We think along the lines of "If I accept certain axioms, then I can derive an interesting theorem from them." And people, mathematicians, are wildly enthusiastic about it. 
— Actually, there is plenty of material. The material is our human societies. But we have no way of determining the root causes of all events and everything that happens. In that sense, there is indeed no material. 
— When I said there is no material, I was referring to the origin of eukaryotes. 
— Actually, there is. We have various proteins and some fossils. Of course, we don't have any specific details, but we do have some reference points to guide us.

— Let me clarify then. I'm far less knowledgeable about this than you are, but I recall the name Lynn Margulis. It was her theory about the symbiotic origin of eukaryotes, correct? 
— By the way, her first husband was the famous Carl Sagan. 
So, Lynn Margulis and her theory of symbiogenesis. It was first articulated back in the 19th century, perhaps in more primitive terms. Originally, people observed a plant cell under a light microscope, examined the chloroplast, and visually noted its resemblance to a cyanobacterium, as if there were symbiotic cyanobacteria living and floating within the plant cell. This is when people started to have the correct idea that this was symbiogenesis. The early versions were met with mocking disdain, and the theory was ignored as it seemed to be completely baseless. Margulis also struggled to get her paper published. It's an incredible story, really. She wrote an article on the symbiotic origin of eukaryotes, which was rejected by nearly 15 journals. For me, this is an example of remarkable persistence and self-belief. I usually lose heart after the first rejection, let alone the second. But she... Her article was rejected by fifteen journals, but the sixteenth one published it. 
— She had very few facts, and from those facts, she constructed a very elegant and beautiful theory that explains everything, the theory of symbiogenesis. At the time, her theory seemed... extravagant. Too extravagant to be believed immediately. 
— It was very unexpected for everyone.
— Yes, but the facts were gradually accumulating. Science is always collecting facts, and the facts have consistently supported this theory. 

— Why did it seem extravagant? 
— It was the 1960s. Back then, no one even considered symbiosis as a factor in evolution. Now we understand that symbiosis is as much a factor in evolution as competition is. In simple terms, they both have roughly equal influence. But back then, there was absolutely no discussion about it. 
— We studied at the biology department from 1982 to 1987. And we weren't told a word about the symbiogenetic origin of eukaryotes. In our microbiology course and other courses, it was mentioned in passing, but it was generally assumed that prokaryotes gradually became more complex and eventually evolved into eukaryotes. It was believed that all these structures of the eukaryotic cell differentiated
— In other words, we weren't even taught this. 
— Symbiogenesis wasn't even part of the biology curriculum in the late 1980s. But around the same time, I read Margulis's book and thought that it explained everything wonderfully. 

— Am I right in understanding that this partly solves one of the bottlenecks in evolution? 
— Some things have become clearer, but the process continues. The fact that the symbiogenetic origin of mitochondria was proven was indeed a major breakthrough. It happened when scientists began sequencing genomes and saw that mitochondrial genomes on phylogenetic trees appeared alongside the Alphaproteobacteria. 
— It was compelling evidence. 
— Very persuasive, yes. Because such similarity cannot occur by chance. Therefore, it can only be explained by the fact that the ancestors of mitochondria were the Alphaproteobacteria.

— Did that make evolution a bit more believable? 
— Yes, especially after they also discovered Archaea. They have a unique membrane that is perfectly suited to host a guest and allow it to thrive, unlike an ordinary bacterium whose bacterial cell wall is not adapted for this purpose at all. The big question in symbiogenesis was who accommodated the Alphaproteobacteria and mitochondria. Who was the host? 
Archaea were discovered after Lynn Margulis's publication, and that made dealing with the theory of symbiogenesis much easier. This is how science works. It accumulates facts and then checks if a fact is compatible with a theory of an interest or not. And if not, why? And if yes, how? 

— I once read in an interview with Koonin that the probability of a full replicator occurring is something like ten to the minus ten-thousandth power. In other words, it's on a scale that matches the number of molecules in the universe. It's unclear how you managed to convince creationists that this event happened, given its extreme improbability, which makes it seem like a major bottleneck in evolutionary theory.
— Koonin's argument is based on the assumption that an efficient ribozyme or ribozyme complex capable of self-replication and handling all basic life tasks had to appear fully formed. And for that to happen, it had to be long enough. About a thousand or two thousand nucleotides long. Koonin also assumed that a strictly defined sequence of those thousand nucleotides was needed for such a ribozyme to function properly. 
He then calculated the probability of a thousand-nucleotide-long RNA molecule with a strictly defined sequence randomly self-assembling. The result was a hyper-astronomically small probability, for which the size of the Universe is insufficient. Even if there are billions of billions of planets, each synthesizing a kilometer layer of RNA, the probability that one molecule out of them will be the right one is... 

— Unless we accept as an axiom that there is an infinite number of universes, then maybe. 
— That's why Koonin says that the universe must be bigger. Indeed, modern cosmology allows for the theory of inflation, hyperinflation, etc., suggesting that the observable universe is just a tiny part of the cosmos... 

— But I either didn't believe it or didn't understand it. Because there can be many universes, but the probability is calculated for each one individually, not for all of them at once. 
— Maybe there are ten to the power of a quadrillion to the power of a quadrillion universes, and life only arose in one of them. Naturally, the intelligent beings that emerged in this one universe out of countless others sit and marvel at how lucky they were to have come into existence. 
But there were simply ten to the power of ten to the power of ten attempts with countless zeros. And with so many attempts, even the most improbable things become inevitable. So, what's the catch here? Why can we argue with Koonin's reasoning? I believe there was no stage in the development of life where a huge, complex, efficient ribozyme randomly self-assembled from a combination of nucleotides. 
Darwinian evolution could have started much earlier. What I mean to say is that first, there are some chemical processes, but Darwinian evolution doesn't work yet. But some chemical basis for life must randomly arise for Darwinian evolution with reproduction, heredity, variability, and selection to start. Darwinian evolution is a mechanism that we know can create, sophisticate, improve, and produce complex, optimally organized systems. 
And we want to know how random chemical processes set off Darwinian evolution because at this stage, everything is still random and unlikely. Once it begins, everything becomes clearer. Koonin's calculation is based on the idea that Darwinian evolution started only when this huge, complex, and efficient ribozyme made up of a thousand or two thousand nucleotides appeared. But I have an objection. It could have started much earlier if there were suitable conditions for non-enzymatic RNA replication. 
This is a real process that happens in a test tube. It has been studied by biochemists like Leslie Orgel, and now Nobel laureate Jack Szostak, is working on it. Gradually, chemists are finding conditions under which the process of non-enzymatic replication happens increasingly better, faster, and with more and more accuracy. 
At first, it's not precise enough to facilitate a full-fledged evolution. There are too many errors. It's too slow. But... Overall, it's logical to assume that somewhere in the universe, conditions on a certain planet have aligned for things to progress swiftly and accurately. The likelihood of this is far greater than the chance of this massive ribozyme self-assembling from a random nucleotide sequence. 
And if non-enzymatic replication was possible somewhere, then Darwinian evolution kicks off immediately as soon as any short RNA molecule emerges, marking the start of evolution. 

— What do we define as living? What distinguishes the non-living from the living? Is it the properties of the replicator they possess or something else? 
— By the way, a truly wonderful book by Carl Zimmer has just been released, titled Life's Edge: The Search for What It Means to Be Alive. It's dedicated to the very question of how biologists differentiate between living and non-living things. I highly recommend it. 
— The book indeed addresses this issue, Lena was the one who edited the Russian translation. For us evolutionists, the working definition is quite simple. Any chemical system capable of Darwinian evolution is considered living. In other words, it must possess a set of four properties: reproduction, heredity, variability, and selection. Although this list is somewhat redundant. The system must be chemical because you could easily classify computer viruses as having these four properties, but they wouldn't be chemical. That's the tricky part. [Both laugh.] 

— Okay. That somewhat explains the first bottleneck, although it will probably never be fully explained. Unless we conduct some kind of foolproof experiment on the matter. 
— Indeed. Just in the last two months alone we saw two brilliant studies that answer new questions. From the first one, which was published in Science or Nature, it's clear that very short RNA molecules, just three or four nucleotides long, can synthesize peptides under certain conditions, meaning they can link amino acids into chains. This immediately opens up vast possibilities... 

— Do the conditions have to be very specific or...? 
— The authors state that the conditions are, as they say now, prebiotically plausible, meaning RNA molecules could have existed in prebiotic conditions on the ancient Earth. There is no science fiction chemistry involved. If even tiny RNA molecules were able to synthesize some kind of peptides, this immediately broadens their capabilities. It means these tiny RNA molecules could possibly multiply using non-enzymatic replication. Because as the molecule lengthens, accuracy issues arise. The larger the molecule that needs to be replicated, the more precise the replication system has to be. 

— So it doesn't need to be a ribozyme, right? Something much smaller could be a replicator. 
— Exactly. In fact, very tiny RNA molecules can act as ribozymes, synthesizing simple peptides. And the second paper was published in the journal Astrobiology. It discusses how quite long RNA molecules are synthesized from nucleotides on droplets of volcanic glass, which should have been abundant in basalts on the surface of the early Earth. 
— Basalt glass is essentially amorphous silicon, and silicon is an excellent catalyst for many biological processes. In fact, that's how clay works. It's an excellent catalyst. 

— So if this goes on, then maybe in another 10–20 years we will be able to fully recreate the entire process... Has the origin of life become less of a bottleneck in recent years? 
— Well, there is plenty of progress being made. Mikhail Nikitin has already written a comprehensive book on the origin of life. 
— By the way, we have an amazing ongoing project with Mikhail. I'm about to reveal all our secrets. I've been studying the fossilization of soft-bodied organisms, trying to understand why invertebrates, like worms, can become fossilized. I've written quite a few articles on this topic. About five or six. But in the latest one, I finally got to what seemed to be the crux of the matter, why a soft-bodied animal can fossilize in the first place. What kind of chemistry is involved? And it miraculously dawned on me that it's all about special molecules — they're called adhesion molecules — that bind cells together (we are multicellular because our cells don't disperse into a cloud but are held together by these adhesion molecules). These molecules are chemically structured to quickly attach either to a substrate or to each other. Therefore, if an organism has this adhesive complex, it means that after its death these molecules attach everything that falls onto them very quickly due to their chemical properties. This results in an instantaneous...

— Do you mean instantaneous in the paleontological sense? 
— No! Instantaneous — as in within hours, even minutes — fossilization. Can you imagine? This is no longer biology. It's chemistry. Metal cations from the environment — water, sediment, and basically anywhere — are deposited on these adhesion molecules. And so, a dead organism — specifically a soft-bodied one, without an external shell, not covered by anything like that — leaves behind a mineralized intercellular skeleton. This had to be confirmed experimentally, and we did it beautifully. That's how our collaboration with Mikhail Nikitin and our other colleagues began. We took a colonial amoeba. It has a unicellular stage, where it doesn't synthesize adhesion molecules, and a multicellular stage — the fruiting body — where it forms a multicellular structure and synthesizes adhesion molecules. 
In all other respects, biochemically, these unicellular and multicellular organisms are identical. Genetically, it's the same organism made up of identical cells, but only at one stage there are adhesion molecules. And we conducted a quick fossilization at both stages. 
We poured an aluminum cation solution (this cation is involved in preservation and fossilization) into the water and observed it after 30 minutes. Just 30 minutes. That's why I say this fossilization is very fast. It turned out that the multicellular stage quickly deposited aluminum on itself, while the unicellular stage did not. 
It turned out beautifully, and we published a wonderful piece on this topic. Therefore, as soon as multicellular organisms appear, there should immediately be a fossil record. But for some reason it doesn't appear immediately, only emerging in the late Precambrian, about 560 million years ago. Why? So we took the simply structured trichoplax and started looking. Why doesn't anything remain from the trichoplax in the paleontological record? We started to observe how it dies and what its post-mortem remains might look like. It turned out that trichoplax sort of explodes after death, disintegrating into a cloud of individual cells. 
Therefore, a paleontologist simply cannot find anything remaining from an animal like trichoplax. No one has ever investigated how this simplest animal dies. We know how a human or a hydra dies, but no one has ever thought to observe how the simplest animal dies. 
However, the story doesn't end there. Misha and I decided to conduct an experiment to see if this simple creature, trichoplax, could leave behind not body fossils or physical remains but some evidence of its movement. After all, it crawls. It moves. So Misha and I simulated its traces. And it turned out that it leaves behind incredibly fascinating tracks! We then discovered similar traces in the fossil record. Unexpected and unlike anything else, but they were there. So, our work on fossilization led to a truly surprising and completely unexpected discovery. 

— I'd like to clarify something. You found evidence of these tracks in the fossil record. Does that mean they had previously been described without understanding what they were?
— Yes. They are referred to as "problematic trackways". They have a special name. It's a whole category of trace fossils called "meniscus-like trackways". 

— People who are not involved in science often think that there are plenty of scientists, at least one for every field. What is the current state of Russian paleontology? How many people are involved in it? How do they feel about their work? And how is it funded? 
— I can provide fairly accurate numbers regarding trilobite experts. Perhaps Sasha will later say something about sea urchin specialists. Trilobites represent a vast group of fossil arthropods that were incredibly prevalent during the Paleozoic era. 
In the Paleozoic era, trilobites were ubiquitous. They are used for stratigraphy, and in the 1970s and 80s, large conferences were held specifically about trilobites. In our country, we likely had around 400–500 trilobite specialists, given that this is a massive and highly diverse group of animals. 
There were individual specialists who focused on trilobites from the Permian, Devonian, Ordovician, and Cambrian periods. There were approximately 150–200 experts in the Soviet Union just for Cambrian trilobites. Now, there are probably only four of us still working in the field. And we only focus on the Cambrian period. There are no experts left who specialize in the rest of the Paleozoic era. 
— Wow. You trilobite experts sure have some impressive numbers. During their heyday in the 1950s and 60s, there were at most several dozen sea urchin experts across the Soviet Union. But now, their numbers have significantly dwindled. 

— Excellent. Let's draw a correlation from these two cases. The number of experts is decreasing across all fields. But why is that? What's the reason behind this? 
— Paleontology was highly respected during a certain period in Soviet history because geological correlation and mapping were primarily based on paleontological data. 
— All geological body mapping, including their depth, geographical reach, and drilling locations, was informed by paleontologists. 
— Nowadays, we have highly accurate methods of absolute radiometric dating, which are much simpler than dealing with a paleontologist who would have to examine conodonts and foraminifera from sedimentary layers. Instead, you can just take a magmatic layer from your core sample, submit it for radiometric analysis, and they'll tell you its age. 
— Moreover, there are ultrasonic probes that can outline the contours of geological bodies with greater precision than a paleontologist. 
— So it seems to me that the economic importance of paleontology has diminished. 
— And for intellectual amusement, there are probably enough of us remaining. 
— Another factor contributing to the decline in the number of paleontologists is the general downturn in areas such as biological systematics, museum work, and collections. Classical systematics, which today is considered almost pseudoscience, has been replaced by molecular phylogenetics. Consequently, the number of museum workers, people who spend decades working with beetles, describing their antennae and legs, is decreasing. Nowadays, it is believed that you should simply homogenize the beetle, put it in a sequencer to get the DNA sequence, and thus get all the information you need. There is no need to examine its legs at all. 

— Is that not the case? 
— It's indeed easier and safer to determine beetle kinship based on DNA rather than antennae or legs. But that won't help you understand the beetle's evolution. You'll know how its nucleotide sequence has changed, but what we biologists are really interested in is why that particular beetle has that particular antennae.

— You want to know what environment it lived in and why it has changed the way it did. 
— Exactly. 

— Then these methods should complement each other. Why is one of them suddenly considered pseudoscience? 
— The word "pseudoscience" is now used to refer to the old methods of systematics. These methods involved people studying a specific group for many years, examining hundreds or thousands of beetles and then declaring based on their expert opinion that the second segment of the antennae is a key feature for distinguishing families and the first segment is a generic trait. Then another expert could come along and say, "No, that's nonsense. The second segment of the antennae is actually a generic trait. It doesn't work as a family trait at all." It was impossible to resolve such a dispute when two leading global experts disagreed. 

— And then along came an impartial judge in the form of a sequencer. 
— Exactly. In general, this seems like an objective criterion because neutral mutations do accumulate according to certain statistical patterns at a specific rate. It's hard to argue that this is a more objective method. 
— The issue is that classical systematists, who examine antennae and segments, don't really trust molecular biologists, to put it mildly. In turn, molecular biologists care nothing for those who study antennae, thinking them a useless relic of the past. 
And since science is generally considered the domain of the young, all this old stuff quickly gets discarded and forgotten. I have a rather peculiar example related to this. In the past, we used special reagents to determine the composition of a fossilized animal's skeleton. If the skeleton turned blue after applying the reagent, that meant there was calcium in it. If it turned yellow, that meant there were barium and strontium present. Everything worked wonderfully. 
The reagent kits were a fast and very efficient tool. Then, about 20 years ago, when instrumental analytics developed, young specialists decided that reagents were unnecessary. "We'll just use an atomic spectrometer. See? Here's calcium. And here's barium. We don't need your reagents." 
Now, hardly anyone remembers which reagents to use. Some specialists still have them on their shelves, the ones high up near the ceiling. If you dig around, you might also find reference books on how to prepare those reagents. Probably. 
But sometimes (or even often), you just want to quickly check what kind of bone you have before you. And reagents work better than analytics because they're very cheap, they don't require special instrument time sessions, and you don't need the connections or grants to use them. But not many people remember what reagents are anymore. 

— We might soon need paleontologists who study science. 
— [Laughs.] I'm not sure. But that's the unfortunate story of what happened to chemical paleontology. Now everyone relies on instrumental and molecular methods, and the old and proven methods have unfortunately been discarded and forgotten. 
— It's sad when certain areas of science die out, even though they could still prove useful. But overall, progress is certainly a good thing. And these analyzers are better than the reagents. However, now, when you need to find an expert for a certain family of flies, it often turns out that there isn't a single one in the country or even in the entire world. There is a family of flies encompassing possibly a thousand species, but there are no experts. It's like in that joke, right? [Both laugh.]

— Where do you find yourself working more often and what's more interesting, scientific discoveries or scientific refutations? So much has accumulated over the past decade or so. So many hypotheses, assumptions, and experiments, that I think some of them should finally be discarded. 
— Our department specializes in scientific refutations. Our Drosophila group has made two of them. Actually, those were the ideas that inspired me to start working with Drosophila. 
In the 1980s, a groundbreaking article was published in the journal Evolution. It reported that Drosophila, when fed different diets, began to adapt and evolve into distinct species over several generations. These new species, when placed together, showed no interest in interbreeding. However, flies of the same species continued to mate with each other. 

— Could it be that they simply didn't like each other but still had the ability to mate? 
— That's not important. The reasons behind their refusal to interbreed don't matter for reproductive isolation. Whether they can't, don't want to, or are somewhat reluctant, the outcome is the same. What matters is that partial reproductive isolation occurs. This first step towards speciation is quite fascinating. And all this happened simply because they were on different diets for ten generations. These results greatly inspired me at the time. There were a few more articles that seemed to replicate these findings. 
E.N.: He pondered over them for five years. 
— Yes. Perhaps even longer. When I joined the Department of Evolution and discovered that we could breed Drosophilas, I immediately initiated an experiment. We caught several Drosophila flies at a garbage dump and started feeding them different diets in our lab. I trusted my colleagues' results and thought we would create a lab model of the early stages of speciation. I thought we would study why they refuse to interbreed, what factors influence this, and whether we could further evolve them into completely isolated species. 

— But your flies didn't refuse to interbreed.
— Well, in a nutshell, they didn’t. If you do everything the way our predecessors did, it does seem like the flies don't want to interbreed. But that's not really the case. It's an illusion created because the flies on different poor diets start to differ in their activity, energy levels, and, so to speak, motivation. When all the males and females from both lines are put together, the strong and energetic ones find each other first and mate. The weaker ones are left with no choice but to mate with each other after a couple of hours.
If it were about selectivity, the male from the same line as the female would win in a competitive test where one female is pursued by two males from different lines. 

— But instead, the strongest male wins, which contradicts the hypothesis. Although, this isn't exactly a refutation, rather a new discovery. When I asked about refutations, I wanted to know if it's feasible, career-wise, for a scientist to pursue them. Because making discoveries is probably more exciting than refuting theories. 
— We didn't intend to refute anything. Instead, we hoped to replicate and further explore this topic. The second example involves Drosophila culture. There was an impressive series of publications by French colleagues claiming that Drosophila have social learning, culture, and cultural traditions. A female fly observes which males other females mate with and then chooses the same type of males, the popular ones. 

— Does she choose the exact same males or just similar ones? 
— Similar ones. They dusted the males with green and pink powder and staged a demonstration. A naive virgin female fly watches another female through a thin glass... 
— She watches that female mate with a pink male. 
— And reject the green one. After observing this spectacle, the observer female is also offered two males to choose from. And she already knows that... 
— Pink ones are better. 

— Do Drosophila attach that much importance to color?
— Those articles sure made it seem that way. Of course, Drosophila can differentiate colors, but it's important to note that smells, contact pheromones, belly licking, and sounds all play a significant role in mate selection. The latter because the male sings a courtship song to a female. Visual perception doesn't play a major role, but the publications suggested otherwise. 
We tried replicating their experiments, but we couldn't reproduce anything despite our best efforts. Our observer females mated but didn't change their basic preferences after observing other females mating with a male of a certain color. There was no effect.

— Lena, have you ever had such instances where something excited you so much that you wanted to replicate it, but it didn't work out? 
— Once, I was cataloging trilobites in my group and was hoping to find a species endemic to Altai in a collection at a museum in St. Petersburg. It had been described. It had a species name and a holotype. I was really hoping to find that specimen there. 
So, I went to the museum in St. Petersburg and took the described holotype. It was supposed to be a trilobite tail specimen. But when I looked at it, it turned out to be a head, and it was a species that had been described long ago and is found in various places around the world. At first, I was upset, but then I found it funny. [Both laugh] These things happen all the time, but... 

— I admire how you can just laugh at it. 
— Science sometimes takes funny turns. I also had an interesting case when I was conducting fossilization experiments. 
It's a long experiment because fossilization can take a long time. My experiment lasted three years, and I patiently waited all that time. Of course, I was doing other things too. I wasn't just sitting idle... Then, one day, an electrician came to me to change a light bulb. I had tall tubes in my office filled with a thick layer of sediment where the fossilization was taking place. 
Everything was labeled and in order. Suddenly — I don't even know how — the electrician knocked over some of the tubes with his ladder. They shattered. The experiment had been going on for two and a half years by then and was nearing its end. I had replicates and controls set up, as required. And it turned out that he knocked over all the controls with his ladder. If he had knocked down some experimental replicates, it would have just worsened the statistics... But when the controls are knocked down, there is nothing to compare things to, so the entire three-year experiment is wasted. At first, I cried. Then I laughed. [Laughs] Such things happen. 

— You have a wonderful personality. I would probably just cry. 
— I started laughing when one of my colleagues, who was also concerned about my experiment, came to me with a suggestion. In my experiment, I used a mineral that was very hard to obtain. Back in the Cambrian period, there was plenty of it, but not anymore. I was given a small piece from the geological museum, which I used. She told me, "Don't cry, Lena. I have a hairpin made from that mineral. Let's pulverize it and set up a new experiment. I'll give you my hairpin." That's when I started finding the whole situation amusing. [Laughs] 
It's science, but it's also life. An electrician comes to replace a light bulb, and a piece of science is gone! Then comes a colleague with a hairpin and gives you that piece back. 

— I've talked to a lot of scientists over the past 15 years, and I can see that certain fields are experiencing nothing short of a revolution. For instance, materials science has undergone a total transformation. Have the new techniques and tools brought about anything truly astonishing in your field? 
— Let's consider the most recent 15 years. Until then, paleontology as a science was entirely based on skeletons, teeth, and other hard remnants of animals. It was widely believed and taught that nothing but these hard, mineralized parts could possibly be preserved. If anything else was preserved, it was considered an absolute oddity, a curiosity not worth paying attention to because it wasn't the kind of substantial material from which meaningful conclusions could be drawn. The theory of fossil formation was also tailored to accommodate mineral findings. The body's hard parts permineralize, meaning they absorb various salts and become hard or change their composition in some other way. That's all there is to it, period. 
But what transpired around 15 or 20 years ago? People began to acknowledge and accept what had always been there but was dismissed as a curiosity or deemed impossible. They started to notice the vast amount of fossilized remains of soft-bodied organisms like jellyfish, worms, and arthropods. 
These are organisms that have no teeth, no shells, nor any other kind of protective covering, nothing at all. And it was discovered that there exists an extraordinarily large number of such fossils. There is a term for this, lagerstätte,  which refers to a deposit with the remains of skeleton-less organisms. Up until the year 2000, there were only about two or three dozen known lagerstätte, and only dozens of species had been described. Then, about 10-15 years ago, people came to the consensus that lagerstätte were not an anomaly but the norm, and that we just needed to search better. This led to a rapid discovery of such deposits with preserved remains of soft-bodied animals. So now, there are at least 700–800 known lagerstätte. 

— This must have resulted in a data explosion. 
— A real explosion, yes! Moreover, it was found that the morphology and structure of these fossil animals in lagerstätte-type deposits are preserved with much greater detail, providing more information than ordinary stone material. I mean, what can we reconstruct from a shell? At most, we can see where a muscle might have been attached. But what do we see in these lagerstätte? We see muscles, digestive tracts, and in some cases even preserved blood vessels. We have described in detail the nervous system of the Cambrian ancestors of the Chelicerata. You can see the nerves in the head and body! So, there is a lot more information available now. 
In addition, our understanding of how fossilization occurs has completely changed because a dead soft-bodied organism won't wait around to be permeated by surrounding salts from interstitial waters or elsewhere, it will simply decompose into molecules. But it does get preserved, meaning it's not salt that causes it. There is a massive amount of new information, and it's much more detailed. It's like... It's like switching from an optical microscope to an electron one. We've experienced a similar revolution in paleontology. 
Now, at least in the West, the majority of paleontologists are working with fossils from lagerstätte. Unfortunately, in Russia, we have almost no experts in lagerstätte. But of course, there will be more in the future. 
A.M.: Our former director Alexey Rozanov used to call lagerstätte nonsense, saying that we should focus on normal paleontology. 

— And what does normal mean? 
— Shells. Teeth. Carapaces. Everything else is nonsense and a distraction. But if you look at the overall trend in paleontology and what's being published in our noteworthy scientific journals, a lot of it is information on soft-bodied fossils. 
— It seems to me that over the last 15 years or so, there has been a significant breakthrough in understanding what happened during the Precambrian. We now have a much more detailed understanding of the Precambrian history of life on Earth than we did 15 years ago, in every aspect. And it's not just about the lagerstätte. Geologists have also made significant progress in understanding how continents formed, how plate tectonics evolved over time, why and how oxygen levels changed, and why the Boring Billion occurred, including why there was hydrogen sulfide contamination. The role of geological processes in the evolution of life on Earth has become clear. And conversely, we now also understand the role of biological processes in the planet's geological evolution. Although back in the middle of the last century, Precambrian life was terra incognita, Darwin's "lost world". Darwin himself didn't know about it at all as no life in the Precambrian was known during Darwin's time. 
— And then there is paleogenetics. It actually emerged during the period in question and has evolved into a fantastic, phenomenally large, and interesting field of science that is very useful for all of us. 
— This is one of the most striking and unexpected breakthroughs, something that almost no one believed in, that we would learn to isolate the DNA of fossilized organisms. For a long time, most scientists thought it was unrealistic that DNA could be preserved for such a long period. 
— When Svante Pääbo began his experiments with mummy cells, he kept it a secret because he rightly thought he would be laughed down. He became interested in the history of Ancient Egypt during his student years and tried to take some courses from historians, but they greatly disappointed him with their nonsense and conjectures. So he used his vacation time to go to Berlin, where he was allowed to examine some mummies and take samples from several of them. And all of a sudden he found cells with nuclei. It was a miracle, and an article about it was published in the late 1980s. That was the birth of paleogenetics, when it was discovered that human DNA in those mummy cells could be stained using a simple histological method. And five or six years later, Pääbo had already read the first genes in a Neanderthal bone. 
— It does feel like a miracle because it seemed that the mysteries of the deep past of human history would never be unraveled. Classical anthropologists could have gone on for centuries, arguing over where Homo sapiens originated. It was completely unclear how to test and prove hypotheses about human origins because the evolution of bones, skulls, and teeth can be interpreted in many ways. In other words, similarity in teeth doesn't always indicate kinship. It could just be convergence.

— Of course, it's clear that the Denisovans came to light because of paleogenetics. 
— Exclusively because of it. We now know that there were at least three distinct Denisovan populations that interbred with various groups of Homo sapiens in different locations and times. 
We have also mastered the technique of extracting DNA from the sediment and soil found in caves. This allows us to determine who once inhabited these places. Even if there are no bones, there is still human DNA preserved in the cave soil. This has enabled us to link tools found in specific layers of Denisova Cave directly to the Denisovans. In other words, it has allowed us to understand their material culture. 
— There may be no bones, but there is evidence of human presence. 
— This is absolutely mind-blowing. And all of this has come to light in just the past 15 years. 

— Let's engage in some forecasting. What fascinating discoveries will we make in the next issue, or what new scientific tools are we hoping to acquire? 
— What I would like to see change in the future is the structure of scientific research, so that we're not so heavily reliant on publishing in either high or low impact journals. And of course, it would be great if scientists had easier access to the metaphorical "Aladdin's caves". Take the Kurchatov Institute, for example. They have everything! Everything! When you see it, you think, "I could do this, this, and this. I could test all my hypotheses!" But then they tell you that you can look at their facilities during a tour but not actually use them. 
— I wish every scientist had a small, compact device on their desk that could do everything. For instance, one in which you could drop a droplet of a homogenized beetle, press a button, and in 30 seconds get a ready and assembled genome along with all the chromosomes, an annotation, all the genes, enhancers, and a full report. And also phenotype reconstruction based on that genome. 

— What do you two argue about in the kitchen? You're both such intelligent and nice people. I can't imagine you actually throwing test tubes at each other. 
— Oh, you wouldn't believe it. We had fierce arguments when we were students... I remember arguing as we were walking home. I was insisting that mathematical modeling was an excellent research method, while Alexander Vladimirovich, also a student at the time, claimed that I wasn't a real biologist if I thought so, and that discussing modeling was utter nonsense. 
We were shouting at each other in the street, nearly divorcing by the end of the argument. But then I taught him how to code, and about a year later he got into modeling. That was quite a memorable argument we had. I remember it because we were arguing loudly in the street, unable to stop, debating which one of us was the real biologist. [Both laugh] Do you remember? 
— The part about you teaching me how to model is particularly amusing. Actually, during these arguments, we usually figure out who respects whom. For instance, you didn't teach me how to code. I went to the library and learned it myself! 
— And when we were working with flies, we had arguments about which controls to use. I wanted more controls, but Alexander Vladimirovich insisted that what we had was enough. 

— But those are just technical disagreements. Do you have any disagreements on scientific matters? You two are a unique case. Two scientists living together, working in almost the same field, and writing together. I'm curious how you manage to get along. 
— Well, we somehow manage to find common ground. For example, Sasha developed his own cultural drive model, and it's largely based on assumptions and hypotheses. We had many debates about which hypothesis is the main one, which one should be modeled, and which one shouldn't. We had serious debates, for instance, about whether to include a reputation factor in the models. I argued that reputation is very important and must be included. How could it not? It's a fundamental factor in social life. 

— I would probably agree with that. 
— But Alexander Vladimirovich said, "No. You don't understand anything." Am I quoting you correctly? We argued about it for a long time. 
— It depends on the problem you're trying to solve. It has just occurred to me that the most interesting challenge would be to model the evolution of reputation culture. Under what conditions did it emerge? If you simply introduce reputation into the model, say the best hunter gets the largest share, the results are quite predictable. 
Naturally, everyone will strive to be a good hunter. So what? Where does this reputation actually come from? One could try to model a situation where there is initially no concept of reputation, but there is a possibility that such a culture could develop, and see when it does and when it doesn't. 
The model is such that you can add an infinite variety of factors to it. Indeed, I have my own ideas about what should be added first, and Lena has her own ideas. But in reality, it's not going anywhere because neither I nor the programmers have time to work on it. This work is very time-consuming. 
— Or, for example, I say during breakfast, "Poor me! No one is helping me. I don't even know what I'm seeing on my fossil creature. Is this hole a mouth or just a dent? What should poor me do? I don't even know where to look for information. And you can't help me. You don't even care about what I'm doing." And so on in the same melancholic tone. Alexander Vladimirovich starts saying that he does care, but he has a lot of his own work to do, so I shouldn't bother him with my sea scorpions. In short, we argue and part ways. And two hours later he sends me articles and says, "I've figured it out. It's a mouth." [Laughs.] 
— Yeah. You research the embryonic development of a horseshoe crab, a scorpion, or some other decayed beetle, examining where its mouth is formed and how it is positioned relative to all these chelicerae. And in the end you conclude that yes, that dimple could be a mouth. 

— That seems like a perfect way to wrap up our conversation. But before we part, could each of you recommend a couple of recent books that you think the millions of people who will read this interview should read? 
— I'm currently recommending two books I believe are very relevant for those trying to seriously understand what on earth is happening in the world right now. The first book hasn't been translated into Russian yet, it might be in the future, although it's hard to predict the future these days. It's The WEIRDest People in the World by Joseph Henrich. It's a two-volume work, and I specifically recommend the second part. Download it from the internet and translate it with Google Translate if you need to, because this book is very prominent and very true. 
It explains why some countries have one type of culture and others have a different one. It explains why some respect individual freedoms while others prioritize the interests of the state, clans, etc. It explains why some want to create empires and others don't. It's not about politics. It's about culture. But nevertheless, it's very spot-on if you get to the bottom of what is written there.
And the second book, which has been translated into Russian and is well-known, which I'm also recommending right now, is Pinker's The Better Angels of Our Nature. It has been fiercely criticized by certain circles, but this criticism is largely politically motivated and only partly justified. Still, it contains countless profound, insightful, accurate, and relevant thoughts and answers to the most urgent questions of today. This includes, for instance, the question that is currently troubling many: how can seemingly normal, kind, likable, and humane individuals actually endorse and defend horrific atrocities? What is the psychological process behind this? How does this happen from a cultural perspective and an individual psychological standpoint? 
— From my part, I think David Reich's Who We Are and How We Got Here is particularly important at the moment. By the way, Reich is a paleogeneticist. His book could be of particular interest to someone who proudly declares themselves to be a Russian, a Georgian, an Estonian, an American, a Papuan, and so on. It shows from a biological standpoint what such declarations imply and how such words should be interpreted. 
For instance, we tend to believe that a true Swede should be tall, with blond hair and blue eyes. However, Reich demonstrates that in the 5th century A.D., there were no such Swedes. Instead, the territory of present-day Sweden was inhabited by dark-haired and dark-skinned individuals. 
Then blond-haired aliens arrived on their wheeled carts from the Baikal steppes, contributing their genes and shaping the image of the modern Swede. Therefore, it's incredibly difficult to delineate between any nations or any human populations. 
— Should we then also recommend Sapolsky's The Biology of Good and Evil? 
— I won't. There are too many pages in it! 
— The book by Pinker I've already recommended is just as big. Sapolsky's book would go well with it, seeing as it has just as many pages. [Both laugh.]