- Paperback: 368 pages
- Publisher: Columbia University Press; New edition edition (Sep 19 2000)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0231105592
- ISBN-13: 978-0231105590
- Product Dimensions: 2.2 x 1.4 x 0.2 cm
- Shipping Weight: 440 g
- Average Customer Review: 2.4 out of 5 stars See all reviews (13 customer reviews)
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Amazon Bestsellers Rank:
#1,010,194 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #51 in Books > Science > Earth Sciences > Geology > Historical
- See Complete Table of Contents
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Product Details |
Product Description
Review
"[A] thought-provoking personal exploration of what the Ediacaran fossils represent." -- "Tree"
--This text refers to the
Hardcover
edition.
Book Description
During an expedition in Sonora, Mexico, paleontologist Mark A. S. McMenamin unearthed fossils of creatures dated at approximately 600 million years old -making them the oldest large body fossils ever discovered. These circular fossils, known as Ediacarans, seemed to defy explanation. Representatives of marine life forms that existed in Precambrian times, as much as fifty million years before life on earth began to diversify rapidly, the specimens bore a superficial resemblance to jellyfish. A typical Ediacaran had a quilted body, three curving arms at the center, and a fringe of fine radial lines. McMenamin´s curiosity was fueled by the puzzle of whether the Ediacarans were animals or some other type of organism. How could such complex forms of life appear so suddenly, without extensive records of prior evolution? Yet, this seems to be exactly what the Ediacarans had done. The Garden of Ediacara presents a mesmerizing documentary of a major scientific discovery, detailing McMenamin´s trip to Namibia, where, with a party that included the renowned paleontologist Adolf Seilacher, the author investigates a spectacular cast made from a colony of fossils in the Nama desert. He chronicles the long, often futile search made by earlier scientists for Ediacara, which began more than a century ago in Europe, North America, and Africa, and the various types of Ediacaran fossils that have been uncovered in the years since. McMenamin concludes that Ediacarans were not animals because they never passed through the ball-shaped embryonic stage peculiar to known animal life forms. But, remarkably, Ediacarans seem to have developed a central nervous system and a brain independent from animal evolution. This startling conclusion has profound implications for our understanding of evolutionary biology, for it indicates that the path toward intelligent life was embarked upon more than once on this planet.
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Most helpful customer reviews
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
3.0 out of 5 stars
A quirky stroll through ``The Garden of Ediacara'',
By
This review is from: The Garden of Ediacara: Discovering the First Complex Life (Hardcover)
Other reviewers here have been about right, though none has mentioned McMenamin's most brilliant conception, which is that Ediacaran body plans could be derived if development were highly directional, unlike in animal embryos. Unidirectional development yields something wormlike, development in four directions gives something like a buttercup blossom. I can think of no way to pursue this idea further, but it seems a plausible distinction between Ediacaran near-animals and animals. As for McMenamin's discussion of neovitalism, I couldn't understand a word of it. There were a couple of factual errors. Writing about German Southwest Africa, McMenamin said that Bismarck had ``decided'' it was time to have colonies. Bismarck never wanted the German Empire to have colonies, as any student of 19th century European politics would know. McMenamin's excursion into Urantia is a bit more troublesome. He says Urantia (a holy book that purports to have been revealed by gods) foretold reconstructions of Ediacaran conditions decades before scientists worked them out, and wonders how they did it. He does not understand that the common folk often adopt ideas scientists first reject (examples, evolution before Darwin, continental drift before plate tectonics), and only later come to accept. In this case, continental drift is the key. ``The Urantia Book'' was dictated by a Chicago insurance agent in the 1930s. The ``scientific'' chapters were drawn from articles in the Sunday supplements -- where continental drift was a commonplace 30 years before geologists were persuaded of the reality of plate tectonics. The Urantia story has been researched in mind-numbing detail by Martin Gardner, and it is very surprising McMenamin did not find Gardner's work, probably the only critique of Urantia ever published.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
4.0 out of 5 stars
The Garden of Ediacara,
By A Customer
This review is from: The Garden of Ediacara: Discovering the First Complex Life (Hardcover)
The Garden of Ediacara is the only book I know of which is devoted to these early mutlicellular organisms. The book is fairly well written and deals with a number of questions about these early organsisms. Among these questions are; the feeding habits of the organisms, their early development, their relationship (or lack of it) to modern animals, their development and mode of reproduction, their extinction, and the possibility that they evolved a simple central nervous system. Several of the chapters in this book could be better written and also contribute little towards the understanding of these organisms. This seriously detracts from the book. The end of the book deals with the question of whether or not evolution is random and makes for interesting reading. It contradicts S. J. Gould's contention that evolutionary sucess is heavily dependent on random factors. As this is the only book about the Ediacara and it's mostly well written, I would recommend it.
2.0 out of 5 stars
Needs proper editing,
By Scott Zasadil (Pittsburgh, PA United States) - See all my reviews
This review is from: The Garden of Ediacara: Discovering the First Complex Life (Hardcover)
The Ediacaran fossils are an interesting chapter in the history of life. They are also an interesting chapter in "The Garden Of Ediacara." Unfortunately, this book appears to have more material in it about Mark McMenamin than it does about the subject matter. Is it truly necessary to show a photograph of a hotel in Namibia or the author's official Mexican fieldwork badge in order to discuss the first complex life forms? I don't think so. The reader truly has to pick and choose what paragraphs to read in order to learn about Ediacaran fossils as opposed to the author's travelogues. Much of the material is simply extraneous. Proper editing would have made this book much more interesting and pleasurable.
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