Darwins Forgotten World

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.

A FINALIST FOR THE PULITZER PRIZE NAMED A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR BY THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW, SMITHSONIAN, AND WALL STREET JOURNAL A major reimagining of how evolutionary forces work, revealing how mating preferences—what Darwin termed "the taste for the beautiful"—create the extraordinary range of ornament in the animal world. In the great halls of science, dogma holds that Darwin's theory of natural selection explains every branch on the tree of life: which species thrive, which wither away to extinction, and what features each evolves. But can adaptation by natural selection really account for everything we see in nature? Yale University ornithologist Richard Prum—reviving Darwin's own views—thinks not. Deep in tropical jungles around the world are birds with a dizzying array of appearances and mating displays: Club-winged Manakins who sing with their wings, Great Argus Pheasants who dazzle prospective mates with a four-foot-wide cone of feathers covered in golden 3D spheres, Red-capped Manakins who moonwalk. In thirty years of fieldwork, Prum has seen numerous display traits that seem disconnected from, if not outright contrary to, selection for individual survival. To explain this, he dusts off Darwin's long-neglected theory of sexual selection in which the act of choosing a mate for purely aesthetic reasons—for the mere pleasure of it—is an independent engine of evolutionary change. Mate choice can drive ornamental traits from the constraints of adaptive evolution, allowing them to grow ever more elaborate. It also sets the stakes for sexual conflict, in which the sexual autonomy of the female evolves in response to male sexual control. Most crucially, this framework provides important insights into the evolution of human sexuality, particularly the ways in which female preferences have changed male bodies, and even maleness itself, through evolutionary time. The Evolution of Beauty presents a unique scientific vision for how nature's splendor contributes to a more complete understanding of evolution and of ourselves.

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.

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.

This book is the first systematic investigation of the response of evangelical intellectuals in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries to Darwin's evolutionary theories. Despite evidence to the contrary, many people continue to believe that warfare between science and religion over the issue of evolution broke out as soon as Darwin published The Origin of the Species in 1859. In fact, as David Livingstone points out, a substantial number of that era's leaders in science and technology had little trouble reconciling their conservative theological views to Darwin's new theories. The author contends that the sort of pitched battle being waged by the "creationist" movement today has its roots not in the evangelical heritage of the nineteenth century but in the fundamentalism that emerged during the early decades of the twentieth century. This study, which sheds new light on previously neglected aspects of the Darwinian controversies, should have appeal for all who are interested in the relationship between science and religion. -- from back cover

Explore the fundamental role of microbes in the natural history of our planet with 40 first-person essays written by microbiologists with a passion for evolutionary biology, whose thinking and career paths in science were influenced by Darwin's seminal work On the Origin of Species.

Recreates the scientist's historic visit to the Galapagos Islands using his original notebooks and logs, the latest findings by scholars and researchers, and the authors' first-hand knowledge of the archipelago.