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The Crucible of Creation: The Burgess Shale and the Rise of the Animals (Hardcover)

by Simon Conway Morris (Author) "We live on a wonderful planet that not only teems with life but shows a marvellous exuberance of form and variety ..." (more)

4.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (9 customer reviews)

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Product details

Hardcover: 276 pages
Publisher: Oxford University Press; illustrated edition edition (31 Mar 1998)
Language English
ISBN-10: 0198502567
ISBN-13: 978-0198502562
Product Dimensions: 24.1 x 15.5 x 1.8 cm

Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (9 customer reviews)

Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 194,765 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)
Popular in these categories:
#14 in Books > Science & Nature > Biological Sciences > Evolution > Animal
#39 in Books > Scientific, Technical & Medical > Earth Sciences > Palaeontology

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Review

'tells a great story and manages to be informative at all levels. New Scientist spiritually uplifting THES The centerpiece of The Crucible of Creation is a descripion, authoritative and readable, of the animals themselves New York Times Book Review --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

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'tells a great story and manages to be informative at all levels. (New Scientist )

spiritually uplifting (THES )

The centerpiece of The Crucible of Creation is a descripion, authoritative and readable, of the animals themselves (New York Times Book Review ) --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

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We live on a wonderful planet that not only teems with life but shows a marvellous exuberance of form and variety. Read the first page

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9 Reviews

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34 of 35 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Wonderful Life reassessed, 28 Nov 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: The Crucible of Creation: The Burgess Shale and the Rise of Animals (Paperback)

A decade on from the publication of Stephen Jay Gould's 'Wonderful Life' there is much new information to be told about the Burgess Shale and similar deposits around the world, and Conway Morris is in the best place to tell it as one of the leading researchers in this subject. He succeeds brilliantly in bringing the fossils to life by visiting them in a time travelling submersible to view their ecology.
Conway Morris does not agree with Gould's interminable arguments for contingency in 'Wonderful Life' and makes a very strong case for a degree of predictability in evolution, there being only a limited number of ways to scratch a living on planet earth. If you have read 'Wonderful Life' you really should read this.
I can find no justification for the reviewer below complaining of excessive religious content - this is an objective, scientific account seeking to piece evidence together to address important questions, and there is no 'religious' material. Conway Morris does have a philosophical side, however, rightly condemning our current behaviour towards our environment as 'utterly reckless'. Unfortunately, the evolution of consciousness came with extraordinary capacities for greed and self-deception, linked traits that suggest the experiment will not last for very long.

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18 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Secrets in stones, 15 Aug 2000

By	Stephen A. Haines (Ottawa, Ontario Canada) - See all my reviews (TOP 10 REVIEWER) (REAL NAME)

This review is from: The Crucible of Creation: The Burgess Shale and the Rise of Animals (Paperback)

You have a choice in reading this book; take a senior course in evolutionary biology, or spend an hour carefully reviewing the introductory glossary. Don't be intimidated by this initial labour, however, there are great rewards awaiting you for the effort.

Our present view of life's parade is unaccountably dominated by the parade of dinosaurs encountered in cartoons, advertising and poorly conceived cinema. Conway Morris brings to view the truly important period in evolution's pageant. Fossils of the Cambrian era were hidden from view until the 1909 discovery of a city-block-sized outcrop in the mountains of British Columbia. The Burgess Shale revealed fossils of a plethora of hitherto unknown soft- bodied creatures. Conway Morris recalls this find, and expands this initial discovery with other sites around the globe to give us a more intimate view of the creatures inhabiting that time.

Reference to Stephen Gould's WONDERFUL LIFE is almost mandatory here. Conway Morris doesn't 'disparage' him, but shows that Gould's excited imagination and desire to support his invalid thesis of 'punctuated equilibrium' led him into fallacious assumptions. Conway Morris has brought hard science to point out the realities of the Cambrian record. Evolution's mechanics have been addressed from several angles. Conway Morris reviews these, offering sound critiques to each in developing his thesis. What caused the 'Cambrian explosion' of novel life forms? Predation. Animals that had scuffled along the sea bottom or waited for food to drift into reach were challenged by more ambitious life forms. Conway Morris has given us an engaging account of the development of life.

There are few flaws in this account. It's amazingly complete for so brief a treatment. Conway Morris barely wastes a word [except an excruciating repetition of the phrase 'this remains controversial'] in his account. He covers the fossils, their form of life, and how these creatures led to the life forms we encounter today. This is not a 'specialist' book, but worth a purchase by anyone wishing to grasp the role of evolution in our lives.

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7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars If you loved 'Wonderful Life', you just must read this!, 3 Dec 1998

By A Customer

Conway Morris gives us his first-hand, expert point of view on what the fossil record tells us about Evolution. Not only the Burgess Shale, but other recent discoveries in the farthest places in the World, that complement former data, are taken into account. The main outcome following these new discoveries is the finding of right places to every bizarre animal that Wondeful life introduced to us, all of them fitting in the main present animal groups. All the questions you had raised when reading Gould's book are answered here. Some may think that Conway Morris has come back to Walcott's old shoehorn and that he is ungrateful to Gould for putting him on the map. This is untrue. Just he got more recent data than he (and Gould) had before. Thus he has changed his conclusions. I am a molecular biologist who was an unconditional follower to Gould's points of view, but Conway Morris' data have convinced me. Wise men know when to modify their opinions. So did Conway Morris and so do I, after having read The Crucible of Creation. Anyway, I will carry on reading Gould's wonderful books. Gould's fascinating prose has gained many converts. Conway Morris' writing is more scientific and less rhetoric. He is not such a good Science popularizer as Gould (who could be?). But he probably knows more about Cambrian fossils than no other person in the World. So you must give him a chance and read this book, It is a really worthwhile work.

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Most Recent Customer Reviews

4.0 out of 5 stars The crucible of creation
Conway Morris's use of the time travelling scientists as a vehicle for providing the imaginary licence required to describe living ecosystems that existed half a billion years ago... Read more

Published 6 days ago by JA Woolven-Allen

5.0 out of 5 stars To understand the Burgess Shale fossils read this
If you read Stephen Jay Gould's 'Wonderful Life', you must read this, to get the story right. Gould might be more entertaining, but Morris will give you the facts. Read more

Published on 6 May 2005 by Wulf Barnim

2.0 out of 5 stars limited but fun
An interesting, good value book focussing on a particularly rich source offossils that give a detailed account of the range of body plans thatemerged during the Cambrian explosion... Read more

Published on 21 April 2004 by W. James

4.0 out of 5 stars Really interesting!
This is really interesting! I am new to this, but looked at "crucible" after "wonderful life" and found the perspective illuminating. Read more

Published on 17 Jun 2001

2.0 out of 5 stars Disappointing. The author's religous beliefs appear often!
My feelings about this book clearly differ from the other reviewers. As an update to Wonderful Life (for example), presenting the newer interpretations of Burgess shale organisms... Read more

Published on 21 Dec 2000

4.0 out of 5 stars Why Stephen Jay Gould is wrong about the Burgess Shale
Here is another book about the Burgess Shale of British Columbia. Many of us will have read Stephen Jay Gould's "Wonderful Life" in which he opines from the evidence of the... Read more

Published on 12 Jan 1999

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