Product Description

'tells a great story and manages to be informative at all levels. Conway Morris has a collector's eye for the sort of entertaining yet informative snippets that keep readers on their toes.' New Scientist Located in the west of Canada, the Burgess Shale contains a unique collection of fossil remains, and has become an icon for those studying the history of life. This remarkable book takes us on a fresh journey back in time through the Burgess Shale and its astonishing collection of pre-Cambrian creatures. In an entertaining and readable style, Simon Conway Morris paints a vivid picture of the critical period which saw the diversification of all the major animal groups, and takes a controversial stance on current evolutionary theories that is sure to provoke much interest and debate. 'It is less bleak in its assessment of life on earth and it is spiritually uplifting, rather than dry and mechanistic as some would have us believe' THES R 'The centerpiece of The Crucible of Creation is a description, authoritative and readable, of the animals themselves. New York Times Book Review

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #59760 in Books
• Published on: 1999-10-07
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 276 pages

New York Times Book Review
'The centerpiece of The Crucible of Creation is a description, authoritative and readable, of the animals themselves.'

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 )

New Scientist

"tells a great story and manages to be informative at all levels."

Customer Reviews

Wonderful Life reassessed
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.

Secrets in stones
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.

If you loved 'Wonderful Life', you just must read this!
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.