Review by Choice Review
Each new Gould book is eagerly awaited by an ever increasing general readership, for he is one of the very few practicing scientists who is also able to write popularly about science. His latest volume is not another collection of essays (although several short pieces on this subject have already appeared) but is, instead, a close look at one of the earliest and strangest collections of fossils known today. The Burgess Shale fauna (a group of animals living together) existed about 530 million years ago in what is now the Canadian Rockies but was then a shallow sea. The Burgess environment preserved soft-bodied animals without shells as well as shelled forms, and most of them do not fit into any of the major phyla known today or in the intervening ages. Gould describes these animals and the paleontologists who have studied them in a historical narrative, examining why the early students tried to classify these unique animals as varieties of known life and how three modern researchers discerned the organisms' distinctiveness. Gould goes one step further to argue that the Burgess fauna are symbolic of the nature of evolutionary "chance": If, instead of the ancestors of vertebrates and mollusks, some of the stranger Burgess species had been successful, the whole history of life on earth would have been strikingly different, and we would not have been here to observe it, nor to read this literate view of science. Highly recommended for all readers. -E. Delson, Herbert H. Lehman College, CUNY
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Booklist Review
For years Gould has argued with eloquence, humor, and extraordinary intelligence that the theory of evolution shatters the last vestige of our pre-Copernican pride. Were the history of life on Earth reduced to a single book, the part about Homo sapiens would be contained in the bit of ink scraped from the period that closes the story. Here Gould focuses and extends his argument, reminding us to forget about evolution being a pyramid with man on top. Try an icon like this: a wide, gorgeous waterfall that on its long descent becomes narrowed by the rocks to a handfull of narrower streams and a few, peripheral threads of water running off to the side. The rich, complex streams of early evolution are represented in the early Cambrian animals of the Burgess Shale. And the threads of winnowed, vulnerable trickles? Well, there are only a few of those, of course, but one of them is us. As always, Gould manages to make his point while filling us with wonder, and this time not only in nature but in his hardworking colleagues as well. For that reason among others, this is perhaps the finest of his many fine books. --Stuart Whitwell
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
The Burgess Shale, a small quarry in the mountains of British Columbia, opened a window on the first multicellular animals (late Cambrian, 530 million years ago). These fossils were discovered in 1909 by America's foremost paleontologist, Charles D. Walcott, who classified them according to modern animals. More than 60 years later, three British scientists began an exhaustive re-examination of the Burgess fauna--with startling results for evolutionary theory and the history of life on earth. Presenting the revision as a play in five acts, Gould, eminent life-historian and author ( The Flamingo's Smile ), introduces us to the creatures of Burgess Shale and to the men who have painstakingly examined them. He explains Walcott's failure to recognize his greatest discovery in terms of his background, then discourses on the value of history as a scientific tool. This is exciting and illuminating material on the beginnings of life. Illustrations. BOMC, QPB and History Book Club selections. (Oct.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
The Burgess Shale, found in the Canadian Rockies, contains an extremely important fossil fauna that includes an assortment of weird and wonderful creatures. Gould, the best-known modern exponent of paleontology and evolutionary biology, interprets, with the wit and grace his many fans expect, the significance of this 530-million-year-old fauna. His arguments entail learning some anatomy of unfamiliar creatures, but Gould gently guides the way. The book does ramble some, but the asides are so fascinating! This book is much more theoretical than Harry B. Whittington's briefer and more matter-of-fact work, The Burgess Shale (Yale Univ. Pr., 1985), another good book on the topic. This is an intellectual delight, one of Gould's best recent books. It is highly recommended for the interested layperson, as well as for students from the college level on up. BOMC, History Book Club, and Quality Paperback selections. Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 5/1/89.-- Joseph Hannibal, Cleveland Museum of Natural History (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
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. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
