At the Water's Edge: Macroevolution and the Transformation of Life - Hardcover

Zimmer, Carl

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0684834901 ISBN 13: 9780684834900

Publisher: Simon & Schuster Ltd, 1998

Synopsis

Evolution is one of the most hotly debated areas of popular science. Zimmer's account of cutting-edge scientific research and fieldwork helps to illuminate this particular chapter in the history of ideas.

About this title

Review

Macroevolution is the interesting part of evolution: the rise and fall of major groups like dinosaurs or horses, the development of whole new organs (like eyes) and ways of life (like pollination). Such changes are difficult to study, and harder still to prove. Carl Zimmer looks at metamorphoses across the boundary between land and sea: how fish learned to walk on land, and how whales went back to the ocean. "The story of each of these transformations hides its own unexpected details, as startling as the skyward eyes that sat on top of our ancestors' heads or the delicate toes that turned up in the equation of a whale." Zimmer's account is accurate yet lively, covering recent discoveries in taxonomy and dolphin intelligence, embryology and eight-toed fossil fish. --Mary Ellen Curtin

From the Author

How our fish ancestors came ashore--and how whales went back
I've always been fascinatined by the shape-shifting that life has gone through over the course of evolution. It's unsettling to picture your ancestors swimming around in the ocean. Just as strange is the idea that whales once ran around on dry land. The clues to these transformations are scattered around the world--Greenland, Pakistan, Australia--but one of the best places to look is central Pennsylvania, where our ancestors were splashing around at the water's edge 365 million years ago. I spent a couple days with paleontologists there, sitting along the side of a highway, hammering out fossils of ancient fish, tree branches, and bugs--the remnants of a hot, mucky coastal wetland where we got our start. It's hard to believe those fossils have all been waiting there all this time to be discovered.

Edition details

• Publisher: Simon & Schuster Ltd
• Publication date: 1998
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0684834901
• ISBN 13: 9780684834900
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 304