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OverviewFull Product DetailsAuthor: Stephen Jay GouldPublisher: Vintage Publishing Imprint: Vintage Edition: New edition Dimensions: Width: 12.90cm , Height: 2.10cm , Length: 19.80cm Weight: 0.245kg ISBN: 9780099273455ISBN 10: 0099273454 Pages: 352 Publication Date: 03 August 2000 Recommended Age: From 0 years Audience: Professional and scholarly , College/higher education , General/trade , Professional & Vocational , Tertiary & Higher Education Format: Paperback Publisher's Status: Active Availability: To order  Stock availability from the supplier is unknown. We will order it for you and ship this item to you once it is received by us. Table of ContentsReviewsA masterpiece of analysis and imagination...It centres on a sensational discovery in the field of palaeontology - the existence, in the Burgess Shale... of 530-million-year-old fossils unique in age, preservation and diversity...With skill and passion, Gould takes this mute collection of fossils and makes them speak to us. The result challenges some of our most cherished self-perceptions and urges a fundamental re-assessment of our place in the history of life on earth Sunday Times A masterpiece of analysis and imagination...It centres on a sensational discovery in the field of palaeontology - the existence, in the Burgess Shale... of 530-million-year-old fossils unique in age, preservation and diversity...With skill and passion, Gould takes this mute collection of fossils and makes them speak to us. The result challenges some of our most cherished self-perceptions and urges a fundamental re-assessment of our place in the history of life on earth * Sunday Times * The names themselves are weird: Yohoia, Opabinia, Hallucigenia. . .and more. They are among the weird and wonderful creatures buried in the Burgess Shale, a minuscule quarry little taller than a man, and not so long as a city block in British Columbia. They were the mother lode for Smithsonian Director C.D. Walcott, an indefatigable geologist/administrator who discovered the trove in 1909, and, true to the spirit of the times, shoehorned all these Cambrian marine specimens (over 500 million years ago) into a few latter-day phyla. And there's the rub, cries Gould, lecturing with a vengeance to eradicate what he sees as the two chief myths of evolution: the ladder of progress (from primitive and simple to glorious US) and the cone of diversity (from restricted and simple to more and better). The Burgess Shale is the crowning demonstration of a Christmas tree analogy: wonderfully rich and complex forms spread across the bottom branches, in time tapering to a few stereotyped branches at the top. Paleontologists Harry Whittington, Derek Briggs, and Simon Conway Morris re-dissected Walcott's fossils, revealing three-dimensional details of forms the likes of which have never been seen - like five-eyed, vacuum-cleaner nozzled Opabinia or bulbous-headed, spined and tentacled Hallucigenia Moreover, the explosive abundance of Burgess has now been repeated at other early sites. For Gould this means that life is maximal at the start, exploding in different shapes and styles that are subjected to the contingencies of history. Unpredictable events can destroy nearly all life, creating opportunities for the remainders. Replay the tape of history and you might end up with predacious birds, not mammals or men. Heady stuff this: Gould demands that readers learn anatomy, and he likes laboring points. But Gould fans will cheer this latest exhortation against purposive creation in favor of a universe offering us maximum freedom to thrive, or to fail, in our own chosen way. (Kirkus Reviews) Winner of the 1991 Science Book Prize, a lively book on evolution that reads like a detective story. Jumping off from the story of the strange fossils found in the Burgess Shale, Gould looks at the debates that have raged round evolutionary theory. (Kirkus UK) Author InformationStephen Jay Gould (1941-2002) was the Alexander Agassiz Professor of Zoology and Professor of Geology at Harvard University and the curator for invertebrate palaeontology in the University's Museum of Comparative Zoology. He is the author of over twenty books, and received the National Book Award, the National Book Critics Circle Award, and the MacArthur Fellowship. He died in May 2002. Tab Content 6Author Website:Countries AvailableAll regions |
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