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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"[A] thought-provoking personal exploration of what the Ediacaran fossils represent." -- "Tree"
About the Author
Mark A. S. McMenamin is professor of geology at Mount Holyoke College. He is the author of a number of groundbreaking books on paleobiology and evolution, including The Emergence of Animals: The Cambrian Breakthrough and Hypersea: Life on Land (with Dianna L. S. McMenamin), both published by Columbia. He edited and annotated the English translation of Vladimir Vernadsky's The Biosphere, and is also the coeditor (with Lynn Margulis) of the English translation of L. Khakhina's Concepts of Symbiogenesis.
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Coming across an arresting full-page illustration in the colorful Time-Life Nature Library, I became aware for the first time of the appeal of Ediacaran organisms. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
Coming across an arresting full-page illustration in the colorful Time-Life Nature Library, I became aware for the first time of the appeal of Ediacaran organisms. Read the first page
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Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
By A Customer
Format:Hardcover
McMenamin takes up where Dolf Seilacher left off in theorizing that the Ediacara (precursors to the animals of the Cambrian explosion) were in fact a separate experiment in body plan, distinct from both plants and animals. He goes so far as to suggest that they may have independently developed nervous systems and sense organs. If McMenamin is right he is presenting evidence for the independent development of intelligence in more than one evolutionary lineage. Such a finding would have profound implications to our understanding of our place in the universe. Unfortunately, I didn't find his arguments very convincing. Seilacher has made a good case for the Ediacara having a unique and tough body plan unlike that of subsequent animals. Some Ediacara do show organs that may be heads--but to assert this is not to assert that they were heads, that they had nervous systems or sense organs. There may be plenty of other sensible explanations for Ediacaran body plans. We j! ust don't have evidence either way. As to the debate about whether the Ediacara were precursors of Cambrian animals or a separate line, there is no reason why they could not have been a separate evolutionary line; the fact that Ediacaran fossils are preserved in sediments that wouldn't preserve Cambrian-type organisms or soft-bodied creatures like worms suggests that a parallel development of animals with Ediacarans was possible, but simply isn't recorded. This is a very intriguing book, and obviously a very political one, designed to land like a bomb in the middle of the debate about Ediacara. As such I think readers should read it with some skepticism, bearing in mind that the Ediacara are almost the last virgin territory for evolutionary biologists to stake fundamental claims. If McMenamin is right it's groundbreaking stuff--but it's way too early to say.
Format:Paperback
VVery informative book. Not perhaps for the faint hearted as it is pretty in depth but a fascinating read and I love how it isn't dumbed down but still has little diagram examples and is still fairly accessible
2 of 3 people found the following review helpful
By A Customer
Format:Hardcover
Reading this book was a real delight. McMenamin weaves his personal experiences in the field with a fascinating account of his quest to solve the problem of the Ediacara fossils - just what were they, animals, or some other multicellular organism or perhaps a mixture of both? This book is well documented so the reader can follow up the argument from primary sources. For me there is nothing more intellectually stimulating than a following a debate on the cutting edge of science with the underlying philosophical issues fully discussed. This book is an exemplar of science writing at its best. I am in complete sympathy with McMenamin's support of the concept of evolutionary directionality driven by both internal and external factors. In particular, the author views encephalization as a biological attractor. Whole new research programs should follow from this book.
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