Wonderful Life: The Burgess Shale and the Nature of History
"[An] extraordinary book. . . . Mr. Gould is an exceptional combination of scientist and science writer. . . . He is thus exceptionally well placed to tell these stories, and he tells them with fervor and intelligence."—James Gleick, New York Times Book ReviewHigh in the Canadian Rockies is a...
show more
"[An] extraordinary book. . . . Mr. Gould is an exceptional combination of scientist and science writer. . . . He is thus exceptionally well placed to tell these stories, and he tells them with fervor and intelligence."—James Gleick, New York Times Book ReviewHigh in the Canadian Rockies is a small limestone quarry formed 530 million years ago called the Burgess Shale. It hold the remains of an ancient sea where dozens of strange creatures lived—a forgotten corner of evolution preserved in awesome detail. In this book Stephen Jay Gould explores what the Burgess Shale tells us about evolution and the nature of history.
show less
Format: paperback
ISBN:
9780393307009 (039330700X)
ASIN: 039330700X
Publish date: September 17th 1990
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Pages no: 352
Edition language: English
Category:
Non Fiction,
History,
Science,
Popular Science,
Geology,
Environment,
Nature,
Natural History,
Biology,
Philosophy,
Evolution
This was an impulse buy because I had heard so many wonderful things about this book. But...well... I found it rather disappointing.There are ridiculous amount of irrelevant waffling and personal commentary at the beginning and end of the book that makes the reading experience a bore. The book get...
This is a book primarily about the abundance of life in that had been preserved in fossils in the Burgess shale.Gould writes about the people who spent hour after painstaking hour examining the samples, deciphering the forms and understanding the compressed fossils in this rock formation. In the sec...
Reading PlanDay 1: Chapter 1 p. 23-49Day 2: Chapter 2 p. 53-106 Day 3: Chapter 3 p. 107-293 Day 4: Chapter 4 p. 240-291 Day 5: Chapter 5 p. 292-324
Gould's best. About the Cambrian explosion. Natural selection served up all kinds of possible life forms whose fossils have been found in the Burgess Shale. However, most of these possibilities were unsuccessful. The big winner was a tiny little creature with a, wait for it, spinal chord. So cool!! ...
Stephen Jay Gould performs a really unlikely feat in this book; he makes arthropods as fascinating as dinosaurs! In fact he makes a subject that could be extra-ordinarily dull - the process of taxonomic classification of a bunch of extra-old fossils of small, squidgy animals - into a dramatic and gr...
Log in with Facebook 
