The Burgess Shale is a layer of rock that is a treasure trove for
palaeontology. Here are detailed fossils of a host of weird and
wonderful beasts that lived 500 million years ago. Many look like
nothing that now lives on Earth; they had to be painstakingly
reconstructed from shiny grey impressions within slabs of flaky
grey stone by scientists like Conway Morris, a Professor at
Cambridge University. He writes in an erudite, thorough and
authoritative style. And while welcoming the attention given to the
Burgess Shale by Stephen Jay Gould's book, Wonderful Life, he
suggests that 'several of the claims made by Gould are perhaps
exaggerated, and that some of them may be either incorrect or
simply uninteresting'. Then he tells you why. It is great to have a
ringside seat at a good scientific scrap, and this is one of the
best. The Crucible of Creation is not as easy a read as Wonderful
Life but it certainly leaves you with the feeling that its author
has won this round, at least. Editor's note: Dr Sue Bowler is the
editor of Astronomy and Geographysics, the journal of the Royal
Astronomical Society, and works at the School of Earth Sciences at
Leeds University. (Kirkus UK)
In The Crucible of Creation, paleontologist Simon Conway Morris
describes the marvelous finds of the Burgess Shale--a fantastically
rich deposit of bizarre and bewildering Cambrian fossils, located
in Western Canada.
Conway Morris is one of the few paleontologists ever to explore
the Burgess Shale, having been involved in the dig since 1972, and
thus he is an ideal guide to this amazing discovery. Indeed, he
provides a complete overview of this remarkable find, ranging from
an informative, basic discussion of the origins of life and animals
on earth, to a colorful description of Charles Walcott's discovery
of the Burgess Shale and of the painstaking scientific work that
went on there (as well as in Burgess collections held at Harvard
and the Smithsonian), to an account of similar fossil finds in
Greenland and in China. The heart of the book is an imaginative
trip in a time machine, back to the Cambrian seas, where the reader
sees first-hand the remarkable diversity of life as it existed
then. And perhaps most important, Conway Morris examines the
lessons to be learned from the Burgess Shale, especially as they
apply to modern evolutionary thinking. In particular, he critiques
the ideas of Stephen Jay Gould, whose best-selling book Wonderful
Life drew on Conway Morris's Burgess Shale work. The author takes a
fresh look at the evidence and draws quite different conclusions
from Gould on the nature of evolution.
This finely illustrated volume takes the reader to the forefront
of paleontology as it provides fresh insights into the nature of
evolution and of life on earth.
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