Gaining Ground: The Origin and Early Evolution of Tetrapods (Life of the Past) (Hardcover)

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Review
"The journey our ancestors made from the sea to dry land is one of the greatest transformation in the history of life, and Gaining Ground documents it magnificently. This should come as no surprise, since Jennifer Clack has been revolutionising our understanding of this crucial evolutionary episode for years now. In Gaining Ground, she decodes a wonderful tale encrypted in fossils, genes, and flesh." --Carl Zimmer, author of At the Water's Edge "Clack does a fine job of shedding light on a key evolutionary transition that has received far too little attention. Her text is clear and her art is simple but effective at showing how fish transformed into the first amphibians. Highly recommended as a window on an often overlooked era."--New Scientist, 12 October 2002 " ... Gaining Ground presents a thorough if somewhat personal review of this controversial and dynamic subject in early vertebrate evolution."--Palaeontological Newsletter, Issue 56, 2004

Product Description
"Gaining Ground: The Origin and Evolution of Tetrapods" is written by Jennifer A. Clack. 'The journey our ancestors made from the sea to dry land is one of the greatest transformations in the history of life, and "Gaining Ground" documents it magnificently. This should come as no surprise, since Jennifer Clack has been revolutionizing our understanding of this crucial evolutionary episode for years now. In "Gaining Ground", she decodes a wonderful tale encrypted in fossils, genes, and flesh' - Carl Zimmer, author of "At the Water's Edge".Around 370 million years ago, a distant relative of a modern lungfish began a most extraordinary adventure: It emerged from the sea and laid claim to the land. Over the next 70 million years, this tentative beachhead had become a worldwide colonization by an ever-increasing variety of four-limbed life. These first "tetrapods" are the ancestors of all vertebrate life on land. This book tells the rich and complex story of their emergence and evolution.Beginning with their closest relatives, the lobe-fin fishes such as lungfishes and coelacanths, Jennifer A. Clack defines what a tetrapod is, describes their anatomy, and explains how they are related to other vertebrates. She looks at the Devonian environment in which they evolved, describes the known species, and explores the order and timing of anatomical changes that occurred during the fish-to-tetrapod transition. Clack explains how older ideas about the transition are being overturned by recent discoveries and new ideas about evolutionary change. Following the story through the Carboniferous period, she shows how the evolution of terrestrial characters occurred several times, convergently, among different groups.Jennifer A. Clack is Reader in Vertebrate Palaeontology and Senior Assistant Curator, University Museum of Zoology, Cambridge, and author of numerous papers on Devonian and Carboniferous life. A shorter version of "Gaining Ground" was published in Japanese in 2000."Life of the Past" - James O. Farlow, editor "Old Blurb". Around 370 million years ago, a distant relative of a modern lungfish began the most exciting adventure the world had ever seen: it emerged from the sea and lay claim to the land. Over the next 70 million years, this tentative beachhead had become of worldwide colonisation by any ever-increasing variety of four-limbed life. These first "tetrapods" are the ancestors of all vertebrate life on land. This book tells the story of their emergence and evolution. The book looks at the closest relatives of tetrapods - the lobefin fishes, both extinct and living forms (like lungfishes and coelacanths). It defines what a tetrapod is, describes their anatomy, and explains how they are related to other vertebrates. It then looks at the Devonian environment in which early tetrapods and their fish contemporaries evolved.There are chapters describing the known Devonian tetrapods, their discovery, and their environments. Taking the actual fossils of tetrapod-like fish and fish-like tetrapods, it explores the order and timing of anatomical changes that occurred during the fish to tetrapod transition, including physiological and sensory changes. The book explains how older ideas about the transition are being overturned by recent discoveries and new ideas about evolutionary change. It then follows the story from the origin of limbs, digits, and other key anatomical features to the graduate acquisition of terrestrial adaptations. It describes the different groups of early tetrapods as they diversified during the Carboniferous period, and shows how the evolution of terrestrial characters occurred several times, convergently, among different groups.

First Sentence
About 370 million years ago, something strange and significant happened on Earth. Read the first page Browse Sample Pages
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover

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2 Reviews 5 star:  (2) 4 star:    (0) 3 star:    (0) 2 star:    (0) 1 star:    (0)           Average Customer Review 5.0 out of 5 stars (2 customer reviews)		Share your thoughts with other customers: Create your own review
Most Helpful Customer Reviews   6 of 7 people found the following review helpful: 5.0 out of 5 stars A humerus tale . . ., 23 May 2005 By  Stephen A. Haines (Ottawa, Ontario Canada) - See all my reviews (TOP 10 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)    . . . plus some ribbing, vertebrae and shoulder bones. But it's the skull that captures the most attention. The multitude of variations that occurred as animals moved in delicate steps from water onto land that make the story most interesting. And Jenny Clack's story of our four-legged forebears is a wondrous tale. Ever since Charles Darwin explained the nature of life's evolution, the question of how sea creatures moved to the land has been an enigma. Consider the many issues involved: walking, breathing air instead of filtering water, hearing in air instead of water, how to feed - and where, and protecting eggs. Clack shows how these topics were addressed by slow, incremental changes in body plan, with changes in one area integrated with those in another. Walking on land meant not only building bones strong enough to support the body, but muscles to drive them. The humerus, the single bone in your upper arm, not only had to be stronger, it had to have joints for a new form of movement. A stride is far different from the flapping of a fin, so the paddling fin had to change. Clack discounts the older, simpler views that the "lobe-finned" fish just developed better "legs". Moving from the sea requires more than just crawling up the beach. There had to be an intermediate step. Clack finds that step in brackish lagoons and shallow, meandering rivers. There, the new four-legged creatures learned to walk on silty soils and learn to mix air and water breathing methods. It was a reinforcing cycle as the change in surroundings developed new capacities. Diet went from fish to insects. No longer able to simply swallow prey as fish do, tetrapods began feeding on insects and their own smaller cousins. That meant biting and chewing, requiring stronger jaws and specialised teeth. Skulls once short and narrow became wide and flat. This reorganising of the entire skull required new musclature for support. The more time on land, Clack shows, meant not only stronger legs, but a sturdier backbone. Ribs developed that held muscles for breathing. Although the earliest tetrapods likely gulped air as a fish gulps water, before long they were using their nostrils to fill lungs. As should be obvious, this isn't a simple narrative. The fossil bones are meticulously detailed - when they are available. Clack's task is rendered more difficult by the paucity of fossils. She has been lucky in her own finds in Greenland and Scotland. Others have encountered Carboniferous fossils in the Ohio Valley, Nova Scotia and Australia. The real treasures should be in coal seams where plant remains have become burnable stone. However, mining operations leave little opportunity for discovery. What has been found has often been misinterpreted. In order to depict what happened to tetrapod bodies over time, she is meticulous in describing individual bone types and how they changed. She helps the description with photographs and a wealth of line drawings. Still, this isn't a book for the uninitiated. It requires careful reading and no little back-flipping of the pages. The endeavour is well worth the effort, however. Clack has established an new foundation for understanding where and how creatures like ourselves originated. Comment Comment | Permalink | Was this review helpful to you? Yes No (Report this)   7 of 9 people found the following review helpful: 5.0 out of 5 stars THIS IS THE SCIENTIFIC BOOK!, 10 Feb 2003 By A Customer At the first place when I looked this over, I had a presage that this must be an interesting one, and now I’m at about a half of the total pages, and betrayed even in a better sense. This has turned out to be a superbly written book and one of the most exciting and intriguing one. Basically the theme that this book treats, by itself, has unfathomable interest. There may be two ways to describe on the history of fish-tetrapods transition. One is focusing on the chorological discoveries and explains on them in an adventure story touch. The other is rather orthodox in textbook like form. The author employed the latter style. However, it’s not boring at all because it’s well composed and organized. And speaking of methodology, her augment is very conservative well based on fossil records and related provinces such as embryology and speculation based on existent animals behaviour. It’s written businesslike and dry expression, not too much exaggerated, even so it’s really fascinating. Although to the complete lay reader, due to the jargons, it looks like complicated, it worth tackling. Many illustrations would help you. And for those who are interested in prehistoric animals and have read some, it shouldn’t be so difficult. As it may sound strange, the author does not refer to the term “amphibian” for this unique creature. And, instead, she applies “tetrapod”. Which means, in spite of their possible life style, she takes them different type of creature clearly distinguishing from the current counterpart. I suppose it’s quite reasonable. This is a superb book! Comment Comment | Permalink | Was this review helpful to you? Yes No (Report this) Share your thoughts with other customers: Create your own review › See all 2 customer reviews...		Search Customer Reviews Only search this product's reviews

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