Darwins Lost World

Download or read book Darwin's Lost World written by Martin Brasier and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2009-02-12 with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Darwin made a powerful argument for evolution in the Origin of Species, based on all the evidence available to him. But a few things puzzled him. One was how inheritance works - he did not know about genes. This book concerns another of Darwin's Dilemmas, and the efforts of modern palaeontologists to solve it. What puzzled Darwin is that the most very ancient rocks, before the Cambrian, seemed to be barren, when he would expect them to be teeming with life. Darwin speculated that this was probably because the fossils had not been found yet. Decades of work by modern palaeontologists have indeed brought us amazing fossils from far beyond the Cambrian, from the depths of the Precambrian, so life was certainly around. Yet the fossils are enigmatic, and something does seem to happen around the Cambrian to speed up evolution drastically and produce many of the early forms of animals we know today. In this book, Martin Brasier, a leading palaeontologist working on early life, takes us into the deep, dark ages of the Precambrian to explore Darwin's Lost World. Decoding the evidence in these ancient rocks, piecing together the puzzle of what happened over 540 million years ago to drive what is known as the Cambrian Explosion, is very difficult. The world was vastly different then from the one we know now, and we are in terrain with few familiar landmarks. Brasier is a master storyteller, and combines the account of what we now know of the strange creatures of these ancient times with engaging and amusing anecdotes from his expeditions to Siberia, Outer Mongolia, Barbuda, and other places, giving a vivid impression of the people, places, and challenges involved in such work. He ends by presenting his own take on the Cambrian Explosion, based on the picture emerging from this very active field of research. A vital clue involves worms - burrowing worms are one of the key signs of the start of the Cambrian. This is fitting: Darwin was inordinately fond of worms.

Download or read book Darwin's Lost World written by Martin Brasier and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2010-03-11 with total page 357 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Darwin made a powerful argument for evolution in the Origin of Species, based on all the evidence available to him. But a few things puzzled him. One was how inheritance works - he did not know about genes. This book concerns another of Darwin's Dilemmas, and the efforts of modern palaeontologists to solve it. What puzzled Darwin is that the most very ancient rocks, before the Cambrian, seemed to be barren, when he would expect them to be teeming with life. Darwin speculated that this was probably because the fossils had not been found yet. Decades of work by modern palaeontologists have indeed brought us amazing fossils from far beyond the Cambrian, from the depths of the Precambrian, so life was certainly around. Yet the fossils are enigmatic, and something does seem to happen around the Cambrian to speed up evolution drastically and produce many of the early forms of animals we know today. In this book, Martin Brasier, a leading palaeontologist working on early life, takes us into the deep, dark ages of the Precambrian to explore Darwin's Lost World. Decoding the evidence in these ancient rocks, piecing together the puzzle of what happened over 540 million years ago to drive what is known as the Cambrian Explosion, is very difficult. The world was vastly different then from the one we know now, and we are in terrain with few familiar landmarks. Brasier is a master storyteller, and combines the account of what we now know of the strange creatures of these ancient times with engaging and amusing anecdotes from his expeditions to Siberia, Outer Mongolia, Barbuda, and other places, giving a vivid impression of the people, places, and challenges involved in such work. He ends by presenting his own take on the Cambrian Explosion, based on the picture emerging from this very active field of research. A vital clue involves worms - burrowing worms are one of the key signs of the start of the Cambrian. This is fitting: Darwin was inordinately fond of worms.

Download or read book Darwin's Lost Theory written by David Loye and published by Riane Eisler. This book was released on 2007-09 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Evolution/ science/ Darwin/ biographyDarwin's Lost Theory is the third and pivotal book for the six book Darwin Anniversary Cycle by pioneering evolutionary systems scientist David Loye. Powerfully contradicting the long embedded stereotype of ?survival of the fittest? and ?selfish gene? Darwinism, this is the widely acclaimed reconstruction of Darwin's long ignored ?fully human, love and moral-action-oriented? completion for his theory of evolution. In Part I: A Young Man's Bold Vision, we meet and get to know Darwin in the critical months during which he first strayed on what became the known theory of evolution, for which he became famous, but also the seemingly contrary insights in his private notebooks, which became the long ignored completion for his theory. In Part II: An Old Man's Surprises, it's 30 years later. We follow him as he writes of how, rather than being slaves of ?selfish genes,? far more often than we are aware of we are driven by moral sensitivity. Of how, though selfish, we are also driven by love to transcend selfishness. Of how, though fiercely motivated to survive and prevail, we are also driven by a transcendent need to respect and care for the needs of others.Surrounded by with his seven children working as publishing and research assistants, the love of his life, his wife Emma, the orchids in his greenhouses, his dog Bob and 274 year old giant sea turtle, we are there as he writes not of how we are driven blindly, witlessly, through a life with no predictability, but instead by a brain that demands of life a sense of meaning and purpose, and by the vision of a better future.Among endorsements by leading world scientists: ?Everyone concerned with our understanding of evolution on this planet owes Loye a deep debt of gratitude?: pioneering general evolution theorist Ervin Laszlo. ?The most exciting book I have ever read on Darwin?: pioneering biophysicist Mae Wan-Ho. ?In this work Loye has brought his unique erudition to an enormous and critical task, and carried it off with genius? : pioneering chaos theorist Ralph Abraham.

Download or read book Darwin's Fossils written by Adrian Lister and published by Smithsonian Institution. This book was released on 2018-04-24 with total page 233 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Reveals how Darwin's study of fossils shaped his scientific thinking and led to his development of the theory of evolution. Darwin's Fossils is an accessible account of Darwin's pioneering work on fossils, his adventures in South America, and his relationship with the scientific establishment. While Darwin's research on Galápagos finches is celebrated, his work on fossils is less well known. Yet he was the first to collect the remains of giant extinct South American mammals; he worked out how coral reefs and atolls formed; he excavated and explained marine fossils high in the Andes; and he discovered a fossil forest that now bears his name. All of this research was fundamental in leading Darwin to develop his revolutionary theory of evolution. This richly illustrated book brings Darwin's fossils, many of which survive in museums and institutions around the world, together for the first time. Including new photography of many of the fossils--which in recent years have enjoyed a surge of scientific interest--as well as superb line drawings produced in the nineteenth century and newly commissioned artists' reconstructions of the extinct animals as they are understood today, Darwin's Fossils reveals how Darwin's discoveries played a crucial role in the development of his groundbreaking ideas.

Download or read book Darwin's Doubt written by Stephen C. Meyer and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2013-06-18 with total page 605 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When Charles Darwin finished The Origin of Species, he thought that he had explained every clue, but one. Though his theory could explain many facts, Darwin knew that there was a significant event in the history of life that his theory did not explain. During this event, the “Cambrian explosion,” many animals suddenly appeared in the fossil record without apparent ancestors in earlier layers of rock. In Darwin’s Doubt, Stephen C. Meyer tells the story of the mystery surrounding this explosion of animal life—a mystery that has intensified, not only because the expected ancestors of these animals have not been found, but because scientists have learned more about what it takes to construct an animal. During the last half century, biologists have come to appreciate the central importance of biological information—stored in DNA and elsewhere in cells—to building animal forms. Expanding on the compelling case he presented in his last book, Signature in the Cell, Meyer argues that the origin of this information, as well as other mysterious features of the Cambrian event, are best explained by intelligent design, rather than purely undirected evolutionary processes.

Download or read book Darwin's Lost World written by M. D. Brasier and published by . This book was released on 2023 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Darwin puzzled over why ancient Precambrian rocks seemed barren of life. Brasier describes the quest to shed light on Darwin's lost world, the discovery of its strange creatures, and what drove the sudden flurry of evolution called the Cambrian Explosion, amid tales told with relish of expeditions to the remotest corners of the world.

Download or read book Darwin's Mistake (UK Only) written by Hans. J. Zillmer and published by Adventures Unlimited Press. This book was released on 2015-02-25 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Yes, there were cataclysms (among them The Flood) in the course of history, but no, there was no evolution. The Earth's crust is relatively young and no more than a few thousand years ago; its poles were free of ice. Published in nine languages, this international best-seller puts the latest discoveries and new evidence against Darwin's 'Theory of Evolution'. The author, who owes his insights and expertise to numerous excavations he participated in, describes recent findings that -- in line with suppressed results of scientific research -- prove what seems unthinkable to us today: Darwin is wrong.