Paleontology
Details and Description
Description
“Endlessly absorbing and informative. It would be hard to imagine a better introduction to this most important and fascinating field.”—Bill Bryson, author of A Short History of Nearly Everything
Paleontology: A Brief History of Life is the fifth title published in the Templeton Science and Religion Series, in which scientists from a wide range of fields distill their experience and knowledge into brief tours of their respective specialties. In this volume, Ian Tattersall, a highly esteemed figure in the fields of anthropology, archaeology, and paleontology, leads a fascinating tour of the history of life and the evolution of human beings.
Starting at the very beginning, Tattersall examines patterns of change in the biosphere over time, and the correlations of biological events with physical changes in the Earth’s environment. He introduces the complex of evolutionary processes, situates human beings in the luxuriant diversity of Life (demonstrating that however remarkable we may legitimately find ourselves to be, we are the product of the same basic forces and processes that have driven the evolutionary histories of all other creatures), and he places the origin of our extraordinary spiritual sensibilities in the context of the exaptational and emergent acquisition of symbolic cognition and thought.
Concise and yet comprehensive, historically penetrating and yet up-to-date, responsibly factual and yet engaging, Paleontology serves as the perfect entrée to science's greatest story.
Table of Contents
Introduction / 3
Chapter 1: Rocks, Time, and Fossils / 7
Chapter 2: Evolutionary Processes / 19
Chapter 3: The Tree of Life / 33
Chapter 4: In the Beginning / 44
Chapter 5: The Paleozoic: “Ancient Life” / 53
Chapter 6: The Age of Dinosaurs / 80
Chapter 7: The Age of Mammals / 113
Chapter 8: Of Whales and Primates / 135
Chapter 9: Walkers and Toolmakers / 149
Chapter 10: A Cognitive Revolution / 178
Acknowledgments / 205
Bibliography / 207
Index / 219
Endorsements and Reviews
Endorsements
One of our leading authorities of human evolution, Ian Tattersall, recounts science’s greatest story ever told: the history of our planet and the life on it. In his hands, the grand history life becomes a page-turning detective story with clues from the fossil record, the rocks of the world, and the DNA in every cell of every creature alive on our planet today. This is exciting science told by one our leading experts.
Ian Tattersall is not only a leading scientist, but also one of the greatest science writers of all time. In Paleontology: A Brief History of Life, Tattersall achieves a very ambitious goal—telling the entire story of evolution. There is much in this book to be admired. The book is very informative, entertaining, and instructive; and the story of evolution is told with verve by a real master.
In this book Tattersall succeeds in achieving very rare combinations. Paleontology: A Brief History of Life is concise and yet comprehensive, historically penetrating and yet up-to-date, responsibly factual and yet engaging. Tattersall shows, through this graceful narrative, why paleontology offers the greatest scientific story ever told.
Endlessly absorbing and informative. It would be hard to imagine a better introduction to this most important and fascinating field.
The fossil record tells the story of life's history—and I have always found it to be the greatest story ever told. Ian Tattersall is the new Homer of paleontology—for no one has ever before conveyed the drama of the history of life quite so lucidly as he has in his riveting new book, Paleontology. I am sure that this book will inspire another generation of young paleontologists eager to delve still deeper into the fossil treasures yet to be uncovered. Ian Tattersall keeps the quest alive!
Reviews
Perspectives on Science and Christian Faith—Vol. 63, No. 4
Ian Tattersall’s book, Paleontology: A Brief History of Life is a panoramic overview of life’s history from the earliest conditions of Earth’s formation to the appearance of Homo sapiens. It is an introductory text, and Tattersall’s approachable, inviting prose makes this book a pleasure to read… Highly recommended for all undergraduate libraries in the sciences and humanities.
Zentralblatt fur Geologie und Palaontologie—2010, Part II
The talent and inspiration of Tattersall helped him to overview the paleontological knowledge on a new factual and theoretical basis and, thus, to paint a new picture of the evolution of life on Earth… The book is written in a vivid style with balanced structure and clear accents. The information is given at its full academic strength, but all explanations are simple (not simplistic)… The book by Tattersall will be interesting for professional paleontologists, archaezoologists, and anthropologists as well as for beginners. The reviewer feels necessary to recommend it strongly for undergraduate and graduate students. —D. A. Rubin
The Quarterly Review of Biology—Vol. 85, No. 4
In this volume, Ian Tattersall, author of dozens of books on primates and humans, takes on the big picture. It will come as no surprise that he does it well. In barely 200 pages of clear, crisp prose, he summarizes the paleontological record for the past 3.5 million years as well as provides succinct introductions to basic methodologies, including stratigraphy, dating, and systematics…As an overview of the history of life or as a refresher course in paleontology, it is an impressive volume to have in your library.
SciTech Book News
Tattersall, an anthropology curator at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City, is a prominent interpreter of human paleontology to the public. Here he summarizes his current understanding about the diversity of the world, the rather small place of humans in it, and how it all came to be this way.
CHOICE—Vol. 4, No. 11
The great accomplishment of this book by Tattersall is the tremendous amount of information that has been crammed between its modest covers. In a mere 200 pages, the casual reader can gain a passing familiarity with such topics as geological time, natural selection, and biological classification, and then be whisked along on a whirlwind tour of life from the primordial soup to the development of "spirituality" in our own esteemed crania. —R. Gilmour