DEEP TIME: Cladistics, The Revolution in Evolution - Softcover

Gee, Henry

Softcover

ISBN 10: 000729154X ISBN 13: 9780007291540

Publisher: Fourth Estate, 2008

Synopsis

In Deep Time, Henry Gee, assistant editor of Nature, shows us that everything we think we know about evolution is wrong. For a long time, popular scientists have told us that by looking at a fossilised bone we could tell whether it belonged to our ancestors or not. This is not true. In Deep Time, Henry Gee, introduces for the first time in the popular science market a new way of thinking that has revolutionised the way that scientists are approaching the past - Cladistics. Cladistics ignores story-telling and authority and proposes a method based on shared characteristics, rather than ancestry and descent. As a result of using this new method Henry Gee is able to show us the wealth of new ideas that is radically altering our notions of the past: Dinosaurs with feathers; why fish developed fingers; what it means to be human.

About this title

About the Author

Henry Gee is the chief science writer and assistant editor of Nature. He holds a PhD from Cambridge in Zoology and has previously been Regent’s Professor at UCLA. He also contributes to ‘Le Monde, El Pais, Die Zeit’ and has previously written ‘Before the Backbone: Views on the Origin of the Vertebrates’ (1996).

Edition details

• Publisher: Fourth Estate
• Publication date: 2008
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 000729154X
• ISBN 13: 9780007291540
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 272