Remarkable Creatures: Epic Adventures In The Search For The Origins Of Species

313 Pages·2009·6.63 MB·English

by  Dr. Sean B. Carroll

Remarkable Creatures
Epic Adventures in the Search for the Origins of Species
SEAN B. CARROLL
First published in Great Britain in 2009 by Quercus This paperback edition first
published in 2009 by Quercus 21
Bloomsbury Square London
WC1A 2NS
Copyright © 2009 by Sean B. Carroll Published by permission of Houghton
Mifflin Harcourt The moral right of Sean B. Carroll to be identified as the author
of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and
Patents Act, 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted
in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy,
recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in
writing from the publisher.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library eBook
ISBN 978 1 84916 862 5
Print ISBN 978 1 84916 072 8
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations,
places and events are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used
fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales
is entirely coincidental.
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
You can find this and many other great books at:
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REMARKABLE CREATURES
‘Carroll has an agreeably conversational style, giving personal immediacy to
what might so easily have been a mere progress-report on the quest for natural
origins during the past 150 years … Offers a bracing tonic for those whose
rational enjoyment of the natural universe currently seems in danger of being
overwhelmed by the strident infantilism of creationists’
Spectator
‘Leaves you with an overwhelming sense of awe and respect for the most
remarkable of creatures, the men and women who searched for the origins of
species and in doing so gave us a profound sense of place among life on Earth’
Guardian
‘[Of] the books published to mark Darwin’s anniversaries this year … best, by a
narrow margin, is Sean Carroll’s Remarkable Creatures, which manages to
combine a wide narrative sweep with wonderful details and superb writing’
Financial Times
‘Sean Carroll is both a leading exponent of the modern search and a forceful
public advocate for biological science as one of the glories of our culture … not
yet another trip down the heritage nostalgia trail, but the celebration of a vital
tradition that began with Darwin and becomes stronger with every passing year’
Daily Mail
‘Delightful … [Sean Carroll] understands and conveys the adventure of
scientific discovery, the passionate desire to know, that united them all’
Sunday Telegraph
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Sean B. Carroll is an investigator at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and
professor of genetics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He is the author
of Endless Forms Most Beautiful: The New Science of Evo Devo and The
Making of the Fittest: DNA and the Ultimate Forensic Record of Evolution. He
is one of the leading biologists of his generation, and his seminal scientific
discoveries have been featured in Time, the U.S. News & World Report,
Discover, the New York Times, and other publications.
www.seanbcarroll.com
FOR JAMIE, WILL, PATRICK, CHRIS, AND JOSH
—THE MOST REMARKABLE CREATURES IN MY
WORLD
Contents
Preface: A Mixture of Spirit and Deed
1. Introduction: Humboldt’s Gifts
PART ONE.
THE MAKING OF A THEORY
2. Reverend Darwin’s Detour
3. Drawing a Line between Monkeys and Kangaroos
4. Life Imitates Life
PART TWO.
THE LOVELIEST BONES
5. Java Man
6. To the Big Bang, on Horseback
7. Where the Dragon Laid Her Eggs
8. The Day the Mesozoic Died
9. Dinosaurs of a Feather
10. It’s a Fishapod!
PART THREE.
THE NATURAL HISTORY OF HUMANS
11. Journey to the Stone Age
12. Clocks, Trees, and H-Bombs
13. CSI: Neander Valley
Afterword: The Shape of Things to Come
Acknowledgments
Sources and Further Reading
Index
What is it that confers the noblest delight? What is that which swells a man’s
breast with pride above that which any experience can bring to him? Discovery!
To know that you are walking where none others have walked; that you are
beholding what human eye has not seen before; that you are breathing a virgin
atmosphere. To give birth to an idea—to discover a great thought—an
intellectual nugget, right under the dust of a field that many a brain-plow had
gone over before … To be the first—that is the idea. To do something, say
something, see something before anybody else—these are the things that confer
a pleasure compared with which other pleasures are tame and commonplace …
These are the men who have really lived—who have actually comprehended
what pleasure is—who have crowded long lifetimes of ecstasy into a single
moment.
—Mark Twain, Innocents Abroad (1869)
REMARKABLE CREATURES