How relate billed platypus to a duck? Do you know?
At a quick glance, you might suspect that mammalian evolution as a flight of stairs is. Reptiles is at the bottom. Take a step and find the strange eggs mammals, our friend, the Platypus. A step up, and you have reached the marsupials which are much less reptiles, but none have quite the same reproductive system as we do. Finally you find most at the top of the Kingdom of mammal - creatures like us, egg neither pouch-wearing.
This progression seems so obvious. It is clean and tidy and ordered. It is also wrong.
The process of evolution is actually much, much messier. In its wake it leaves several dead ends, whole orders or classes gone extinct or whittled to on a single surviving species - the last bastion of the once-proud line. And evolution does not work to make people. This is completely the wrong way to think. The creatures are alive today not our ancestors. Instead of a stage step along with the Kangaroo and the Platypus, each of us at the end of their own narrow road, we are with the people at the top. When we look, back in the past we see these paths turn and branch and dead end. Far enough, and our paths meet at a crossroads. But between this common ancestor and us, the road is littered with cousins, that doesn't make it all.
There is no simple roadmap to follow. Sure not for us laymen. This is clear, every time, if you read a news story on a new fossil discovery, or see another school board debate whether at all evolution should be taught. But the evolutionary path was not clearly the people who first pursued it, either. Many bugs were actually and mistakes today together with the public at first made of natural historians and Palaeontologists,. Evolution is chaotic and the development of the evolution happened twice.
It is the story of how the theory of evolution came into being and how to move the information to accommodate new evidence, that science tells blogger Brian Switek in his book written in stone, a handy Primer for all, to understand the theory of evolution, or the way that science in general works.
In the past year I have convinced that it is much easier to complex scientific concepts, understand, if you "" discover for themselves the can on the basis of the history how did scientists with these concepts in the first place.
If I Marcus chown reviewed the match box, that ate a 40-ton truck, I told you that chown explains nuclear fusion through the centuries long history, the scientists of the question led "Why is the hot sun?" to the modern understanding of the processes at work in the Sun of the heart.
The story was no triumph straight. On the way, scientists got things wrong, they made predictions that proved to be wrong. But, since they could collect new information, they correct the error. We could not understand that Sun perfectly today Interior. But we are much closer to the truth, just because many individual scientists built on and the other ideas.
Written stone is like that, but for the evolution.
Starting in the 1600s with Nicolaus Steno, a young Dutchman, published evidence that the triangular stones found were actually fossilized shark teeth, throughout Europe the book winds over four centuries of scientific thought. Observations such as Steno of the merged in a closed theory of species as change separated on the way, can - and new data from fossil records and biology help to revise and expand that basic evolutionary theory to explain to the mechanisms of change, and more accurate stories for living things.
At the end you come away with a much better understanding of how evolution works, because you will understand where the theory came from. It's like baking. A cake is kind of an intimidating, what to do if you've only ever seen the finished product. But as soon as you have followed along with an experienced Baker, the whole thing is much more clear.
The downside: as you can imagine this book is pretty close to make. Switek the story breaks into easy chunks - the first chapters follow the basic idea of the evolution of Steno to Darwin; After that the chapters focus on specific evolutionary questions, such as the relationship between dinosaurs and birds, and mammals where came from. The structure of the book makes it relatively easy to keep track of what you have learned in a big picture sense. But, at a level more detail-oriented is a lot of information coming at you soon.
Each chapter provides many proper names - both the scientist and the fossils - and again leads a key figures from the previous chapters. Unless you have a particularly good memory (or you're taking notes), it is likely that you to flip back and align from time to time have. If a book to read is like, most people who read, will recall written the train ride in stone, but not all small town stopped at them along the way.
This is unfortunate, but it should not discourage the book to read. Even if your Ichthyostega mixed you with your Eusthenopteron, this book is still to help you better understand their place in the history of life.
I talk a lot about the importance of understanding the context behind what you read in the newspaper. Written in stone, context is all. You, as a layperson, not necessarily name it valuable for you can each extinct limbed proto amphibians (Ichthyostega and Eusthenopteron of which two), but a general understanding how amphibians came first would be to exist, and they think why scientists believe it happened in the way it did. Written, it will stone you there. In your head, you read "Ichthyostega" as "Ickthawhatever".
The book: written in stone by Brian Switek
Disclaimer: I have a free evaluation copy of this book by the author. In other words, I get many free review copies of books. I tell you only about those who think I that you really need to read.
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