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Review
The story is part travelogue, part memoir, told in an individual style with singular anecdotes. This is a scientific adventure that will entertain and inform general readers and has the potential to inspire the next generation of young researchers. (The Quarterly Review of Biology )
...the most lively book about matters Cambrian and earlier. Martin Braiser has an engaging personality which comes across well in print. (Richard A. Fortey, Times Literary Supplement )
Engaging account. (New Scientist )
If there is one book in this crop that Darwin himself would surely have appreciated, it is 'Darwin's Lost World'. (Clive Cookson, Financial Times )
...the most lively book about matters Cambrian and earlier. Martin Braiser has an engaging personality which comes across well in print. (Richard A. Fortey, Times Literary Supplement )
Engaging account. (New Scientist )
If there is one book in this crop that Darwin himself would surely have appreciated, it is 'Darwin's Lost World'. (Clive Cookson, Financial Times )
Product Description
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.
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First Sentence
It is January, 1859. Imagine being a visitor, seated on a sofa in Darwin's large and dark study at Down House in Kent. Read the first page Browse Sample Pages
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index
It is January, 1859. Imagine being a visitor, seated on a sofa in Darwin's large and dark study at Down House in Kent. Read the first page Browse Sample Pages
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
22 of 22 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
This is a very interesting book on an issue which has puzzled students of Earth history since at least the time of The Origin of Species in 1859; was the apparent explosion of animal life in the Cambrian period a real event, and if so what was its cause?
This book reads a bit like a scientific whodunit as the possibilities are considered and a suspect - or should I say, an explanation - emerges. The author, Professor of Palaeobiology at Oxford, has obviously been a very active researcher in the Precambrian over the years, and some might object that the descriptions of his expeditions slows in some the ways the discussion of the science. However, it makes one understand how knowledge is gained in the field (in more senses than one), how the theories are grounded, and is an inherent part of the argument.
There are plenty of ideas, and some touch upon fashionable concerns such complex adaptive systems and the ways in which the presence of life can mould the whole physical and chemical constitution of the Earth. These issues are not raised here because they are fashionable but because they may give us some useful insights into the data. The book is a report from a moving front, and so inevitably raises some questions which can't yet be answered. For example, I for one would have like to have some more conclusive information on the nature of the late Precambrian Ediacaran biota, whose members leave no trace of having had a mouth, a gut or bilateral symmetry - but as yet, we don't have it.
In short, this book is a very exciting window into a developing area of science, and into how that science is done. It also beautifully produced by OUP. The only doubt I have is the title. True, the sudden appearance of animal classes in the Cambrian, with little trace of what they had evolved from, was a worry to Darwin, but I suspect that had this not been published in an anniversary year, the great man's name might not have figured so prominently in the title. But, there again, times are hard and we all have livings to make, even academic publishers.
This book reads a bit like a scientific whodunit as the possibilities are considered and a suspect - or should I say, an explanation - emerges. The author, Professor of Palaeobiology at Oxford, has obviously been a very active researcher in the Precambrian over the years, and some might object that the descriptions of his expeditions slows in some the ways the discussion of the science. However, it makes one understand how knowledge is gained in the field (in more senses than one), how the theories are grounded, and is an inherent part of the argument.
There are plenty of ideas, and some touch upon fashionable concerns such complex adaptive systems and the ways in which the presence of life can mould the whole physical and chemical constitution of the Earth. These issues are not raised here because they are fashionable but because they may give us some useful insights into the data. The book is a report from a moving front, and so inevitably raises some questions which can't yet be answered. For example, I for one would have like to have some more conclusive information on the nature of the late Precambrian Ediacaran biota, whose members leave no trace of having had a mouth, a gut or bilateral symmetry - but as yet, we don't have it.
In short, this book is a very exciting window into a developing area of science, and into how that science is done. It also beautifully produced by OUP. The only doubt I have is the title. True, the sudden appearance of animal classes in the Cambrian, with little trace of what they had evolved from, was a worry to Darwin, but I suspect that had this not been published in an anniversary year, the great man's name might not have figured so prominently in the title. But, there again, times are hard and we all have livings to make, even academic publishers.
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
Some 530 million years ago, complex animal life appeared virtually 'overnight' with nearly all major animal groups appearing rapidly in the fossil record; the so called 'Cambrian explosion'.
The sudden appearance of animal life in the fossil record was a major puzzle for Darwin, who believed that the Precambrian, the 'lost world' of the book's title, must have teemed with life, the evidence for which would eventually be found. Was the Cambrian explosion really an explosion of life or an explosion of fossilisation? Is it an artifact, perhaps caused by Precambrian animals lacking easily fossilisable parts, or the fossil record simply being 'a bit rubbish'? Are, as Darwin suspected, the fossils there but yet to be found, or is there something more subtle going on?
This book is an engaging account of the efforts of paleontologists to uncover the truth of the Precambrian. The author, often drawing on his own experiences of expeditions to far-flung and often inhospitable locations lays out the clues and the evidence before drawing them together to his final conclusions.
In the main I thoroughly enjoyed this lively and personal account of the author's work and although it can be easy to get lost amongst the taxonomy and paleontological terms, to confuse your Halkieria with your Maikhanella, you'll just have to pay attention - no bad thing.
The sudden appearance of animal life in the fossil record was a major puzzle for Darwin, who believed that the Precambrian, the 'lost world' of the book's title, must have teemed with life, the evidence for which would eventually be found. Was the Cambrian explosion really an explosion of life or an explosion of fossilisation? Is it an artifact, perhaps caused by Precambrian animals lacking easily fossilisable parts, or the fossil record simply being 'a bit rubbish'? Are, as Darwin suspected, the fossils there but yet to be found, or is there something more subtle going on?
This book is an engaging account of the efforts of paleontologists to uncover the truth of the Precambrian. The author, often drawing on his own experiences of expeditions to far-flung and often inhospitable locations lays out the clues and the evidence before drawing them together to his final conclusions.
In the main I thoroughly enjoyed this lively and personal account of the author's work and although it can be easy to get lost amongst the taxonomy and paleontological terms, to confuse your Halkieria with your Maikhanella, you'll just have to pay attention - no bad thing.
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
A pleasure to read, and informative to both the layman and the specialist.
(Disclaimer : I'm a geologist by profession, though not in Prof Brasier's field.)
Brasier's scientific credentials are impeccable. As others have mentioned, his critique of the famous "Apex Chert" fossils asserted by Schopf, using Schopf's own criteria, brought him to wider public knowledge, but this mix of scientific review and field trip reminiscence shows that he has had a deep history himself in this field. This isn't a monograph or technical review, so the alternation between personal encounters with particular bits of "deep time" and more technical description of the fossils they contain and their implications is a perfectly workable way of linking together what would otherwise be a rather daunting collection of facts for the popular audience. From his written style, I have no doubt that Prof. Brasier will be an entertaining lecturer, and I look forward to attending such.
This book covers the middle-distance history of life on Earth, steadily working back from the emergence of readily fossilised organisms with hard parts in the early Cambrian (one of the problems that perplexed Darwin, generating the title), to the mid-Proterozoic of around a thousand million years ago. Evidently there is at least one more book in the works, presumably covering the earlier parts of the history of life on Earth ; whether Prof. Brasier also approaches the Origin Of Life question there remains to be seen.
The book couldn't be used as a field guide in itself, but the 10 pages of bibliography and 25 pages of supplementary notes do provide enough detail for the interested reader to follow up on with armchair study or their own field study if they feel sufficiently inclined. This is a reasonably happy medium between the full-blown technical paper and the "popular science" genre.
Highly recommended. May cause apoplectic fits amongst certain religious groups, which is a recommendation in itself.
(Disclaimer : I'm a geologist by profession, though not in Prof Brasier's field.)
Brasier's scientific credentials are impeccable. As others have mentioned, his critique of the famous "Apex Chert" fossils asserted by Schopf, using Schopf's own criteria, brought him to wider public knowledge, but this mix of scientific review and field trip reminiscence shows that he has had a deep history himself in this field. This isn't a monograph or technical review, so the alternation between personal encounters with particular bits of "deep time" and more technical description of the fossils they contain and their implications is a perfectly workable way of linking together what would otherwise be a rather daunting collection of facts for the popular audience. From his written style, I have no doubt that Prof. Brasier will be an entertaining lecturer, and I look forward to attending such.
This book covers the middle-distance history of life on Earth, steadily working back from the emergence of readily fossilised organisms with hard parts in the early Cambrian (one of the problems that perplexed Darwin, generating the title), to the mid-Proterozoic of around a thousand million years ago. Evidently there is at least one more book in the works, presumably covering the earlier parts of the history of life on Earth ; whether Prof. Brasier also approaches the Origin Of Life question there remains to be seen.
The book couldn't be used as a field guide in itself, but the 10 pages of bibliography and 25 pages of supplementary notes do provide enough detail for the interested reader to follow up on with armchair study or their own field study if they feel sufficiently inclined. This is a reasonably happy medium between the full-blown technical paper and the "popular science" genre.
Highly recommended. May cause apoplectic fits amongst certain religious groups, which is a recommendation in itself.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
Absolute cracker
Re-read this a few weeks ago and enjoyed it as much the second time round. Occasionally quirky but never dull.
Published 13 months ago by PJW Griffin
Dig deep
The books recounts the story of the search for the missing world of pre-Cambrian life.
Lynn Margulis described this book as 'a joy to read' and that is spot on. Read more
Lynn Margulis described this book as 'a joy to read' and that is spot on. Read more
Published 17 months ago by djb
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