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| Evolution: What the Fossils Say and Why It Matters | 
 enlarge | Author: Donald R. Prothero
Creator: Carl Buell
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Category: Book
List Price: $29.50
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Avg. Customer Rating:  40 reviews
Sales Rank: 17075
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 408
Shipping Weight (lbs): 2.1
Dimensions (in): 9.9 x 7.2 x 1
ISBN: 0231139624
Dewey Decimal Number: 576.8
EAN: 9780231139625
ASIN: 0231139624
Publication Date: October 11, 2007
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Condition: Brand new book delivered from the UK in 10-14 days.
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| Customer Reviews:
 Transition fossils up the wazoo December 21, 2007
15 out of 16 found this review helpful
Major conclusions of the book include:
1) The fossil record provides very strong evidence for evolution.
2) Transition fossils have been found in abundance.
3) Other forms of evidence, primarily genetic sequence comparisons, but also biogeography and embryology, reinforce the paleontological findings with independent verification.
Prothero starts with an introductory chapter on the scientific method. This is followed with one on creationism, including Intelligent Design creationism, and the unscientific and dishonest methods used by the creationists.
Chapter 3: The process of fossilization, and a discussion of geology as it relates to paleontology and evolution. Prothero takes readers on a tour of the Grand Canyon, heaping stratum after stratum on the woefully unevidenced claims of the young earth creationists. He also discusses isotope dating methods.
Chapter 4 discusses evolution in general, and mentions the various lines of evidence which contribute to scientific acceptance of the theory.
Chapter 5 is about systematics. Prothero explains the bushiness of the "tree of life," and gives an introduction to cladistics, the current leading method for paleontological classification.
Chapters 6 through 15 are all about fossils, fossils, fossils! Prothero starts at the beginning with a brief description of "origin of life" studies, and isotope and microfossil evidence for microbe existence dating back over three billion years.
Chapter 7 is about the Cambrian explosion which is so loved and distorted by creationists. Prothero discusses Precambrian evidence of multicellular organisms, including the Ediacarian and Vendian fossils, the small shellies, the length of the "Cambrian explosion" itself, evolution of forms throughout the Cambrian era, and the relationship between Precambrian and Cambrian forms with modern forms of life.
Chapter 8 moves on to invertebrate fossils, particularly plankton and shellfish fossils which make up such a huge portion of the fossil record, and which show numerous examples of gradual "Darwinian" evolution.
Chapter 9: fish. Chapter 10: the transition from lobe-finned fish to early tetrapods. This includes the 2005 find Tiktaalik, and many other transitional forms. Chapter 11: Amniotes; reptiles. Chapter 12: Dinosaurs, including the evidence for birds having dinosaur ancestry. Recent finds of feathered dinosaurs from China are discussed here.
Chapters 13-15 discuss evolution of mammals. Chapter 13: the rise of early mammals, Chapter 14: radiation of various mammalian lineages, and chapter 15: the ape to human transition.
In chapter 16, Prothero wraps up with some preaching about the evils of creationism.
The book is very up-to-date. Most of the big fossil finds of the last decade are discussed: Tiktaalik, feathered dinosaurs, whale ancestors.
I found the discussion of molecular biology to be a bit weak, but didn't find any serious errors. Prothero mentions the sequence data relevant to classification when it is relevant; For example in the discussion of artiodactyl ancestry of whales. Prothero is a paleontologist though, and the fossils are the highlight of the book. The book contains numerous black and white drawings interspersed in the text, and a series of color plates in the center. In some sections, particularly about the radiation of mammals, Prothero seemed to be going to fast. Large groups of mammals are discussed with a chart and a couple of pages of text each. It would have been nice to see more details of all those various species, but I understand that would have made for a much longer book. As an argument from excess about the huge number of transitional fossils which must be denied by creationists, the book excels. It was great to see various fossil discoveries which I have seen mentioned in the media discussed in their proper context.
 IF ONLY CREATIONISTS WOULD READ THIS...... December 6, 2007
14 out of 17 found this review helpful
...with an open mind, they might learn a thing or two! On the other hand, they have no open mind almost by definition, so it's a bit of a pointless opener...
But I would recommend reading this book to just about anyone else with an interest in evolutionary biology, paleontology, and the philosophy of science... Prothero's work shows top-notch writing skills and reads in the most pleasant way! It shows a masterful ability to condense and explain complex sociocultural and paleontological issues in a few sentences, making them understandable in the best possible way... And really it shows how much the author has been able to handle lots of information about lots of different subjects and still maintain control on the subject overview he was aiming for. My compliments...
After a couple of opening chapters on what science is and what its relationships and merits are with respect to pseudoscience and religion in examining the physical world, Prothero introduces a few basics of general biology and paleontology in chapters 3 to 4. He's been able to explain the fundamentals of systematics in a not too technical way while also presenting its historical development through time, and not one page was dull or cumbersome to read through! Something I still have to see in any other book, whether textbook or popularization... Systematics is usually, and almost unavoidably, presented in the most dreadful and maddeningly boring ways everywhere else!
Then comes the best part of course, the remaining ten chapters, which accompany the reader along a journey through time, from the very start of life when our planet would have been alien to us, to human origins when we were already almost there. Shame that plant evolution has been skipped, but for the rest, it's all there... From unicellular life to the radiation of the Invertebrates (clearing up the famous misconceptions on the "Cambrian explosion", which was more of a slow-motioned, tentative evolutionary experiment in the end), from how Chordates rised to the world from squishy and unprepossessing animals that most people don't even know, to the first Tetrapods scouting the lands, from why you're actually entering a Kentucky Fried Dinosaur everyday to the endless variety of forms and lifestyles that Mammals evolved...
There is really grandeur in such a view of life, as Darwin declaimed. And here and there, while great examples of evolutionary process are shown and explained, old-fashioned creationism objections are discussed and demolished... It's fun (yeah ok, if you're into paleontology...), it's amazingly readable and fluent, and it's instructive: more one couldn't ask?
And in the last chapter of the book, he expounds the most important issue of all. Why, this whole big issue of evolutionary biology being confronted and challenged continuously by religious fundamentalists, is not just about getting things right about the world around us and about our animal nature. It's about politics, society, freedom and tolerance... But you can read it for yourself...
I found some chapters to be little masterworks of clarity and contextual explanation which would make for great additional reading for undergrads... It's not just a good popularizing essay on paleontology, biology and the nature of scientific thought, it would really be good for university courses too!
I don't know why Prothero gets so overexcited about punctuated equilibria or why he spent so much time discussing old-school creationism while ignoring lots of ID nonsense, but doesn't matter. It's worth reading, all of it! Tells you not about drab facts, but how we arrived at certain conclusions. Which is the best way to discuss science....
 Good But Overwrought May 27, 2008
14 out of 17 found this review helpful
EVOLUTION, a book by Caltech paleontologist Donald Prothero,
provides a survey of the paleontological evidence for modern
evolutionary science, using it to repudiate the claims of the
only too energetic Darwin-basher community.
Alas, in his eagerness to deal with the Darwin-bashers, Prothero
goes over the top, producing a work that comes across as
abrasive and heavy-handed. Granted, the Darwin-bashers are
100% humbugs, but Prothero goes beyond merely demolishing
their claims to throwing personal abuse at them in a tiresomely
repetitive way, not merely calling them liars but even
comparing them to neo-Nazis and Holocaust deniers. I kept
feeling like I was taking flecks of spittle in my face as
Prothero shouted red-faced at me at close range.
OK, maybe that's something of an exaggeration as well, but
Prothero does lose his cool far more than he needs to. A
reader finds the discussion of the concept of "hydraulic
sorting" advocated by Henry Morris and John Whitcomb perfectly
amusing, but it would have nailed them more accurately to
have wondered what they had been smoking, instead of getting
hot under the collar about it.
Similarly, comparing the Darwin-bashers to 911 "truthers"
would have got the point across, but dragging in Holocaust
deniers is just screaming NAZI NAZI! Yes, I have met
Darwin-bashers who are also Holocaust deniers and the
Darwin-bashers do not hesitate to scream NAZI NAZI!
themselves, but still, if Prothero wants to think he's
one of the White Hats -- as well as maintain credibility
with his readers -- he needs to hold himself to a higher
standard of conduct.
When Prothero warms to his topic, fortunately, this is an
excellent book, a very nice review of leading-edge paleontology.
(Hmm, looks like I better be careful before I ever mention
"mammal-like reptiles" again!) Even when he's sticking to the
science, however, he can come across as dogmatic, for example
simply dismissing Dawkins' comments about "survival machines".
One might not agree with Dawkins, but just tossing out the
points he was trying to make without bothering to address them
merely suggests Prothero was too indifferent to give them a
serious hearing.
I was also a bit disappointed that he said little or nothing
about plant evolution. However, this was clearly a conscious
choice by the author: there's no real controversy over plant
fossils because nobody singles them out for argument, and
the book had to draw the line somewhere. I should like to
hint, however, that a later edition of this book discuss
Dry Falls up in Washington State, since it makes such a good
example of what *real* flood geology looks like.
Overall, I recommend this book, in fact I haven't seen any
popular book on current paleontology in its league, but it's
the kind of publication where I wish it had come with a
volume control. This would have been a great book instead
of merely a good one if Prothero had been given an editor
who could have provided some balance, but unfortunately he
didn't get that lucky.
Slam-dunk rebuttal to vacuous anti-evolution claims January 8, 2008
13 out of 14 found this review helpful
First let me say that I approached this book as a scientist (my specialty is ecology) and a Christian, although I am entirely mainstream in my views of evolution. Consequently, I have in recent years gained quite a bit of firsthand experience debating evolution with some strong ID proponents. Coming from that background, and having spent some time reading some of Dr. Prothero's more technical writing on evolution, I was quite intrigued when I heard about this book. I immediately told my wife that it was at the top of my Christmas gift list. Happily, she humored me, and I have enjoyed learning all sorts of things large and small about paleontology. Dr. Prothero has produced a very readable book that should be a great learning resource for all but the most seasoned expert, yet not scare off the newcomer to this fascinating topic. A big part of his motivation is clearly to counteract the distortions and misleading claims by both old-school creationists and the Intelligent Design movement. I think he succeeds admirably; indeed this was much of the appeal to me, because I have long sought sources that provide explicit rebuttals to the many creationist/ID claims that my gut instinct told me were wrong. For all of you who might have similar yearnings, Dr. Prothero has provided us with a great answer book. In the process, he takes no prisoners in repeatedly (perhaps a bit more often than needed) denouncing the misleading or dishonest claims of the likes of Gish, Morris, Sarfati, Wells, and Davis & Kenyon. Such direct claims are needed in a time when ID proponents try to convince the public that there is some mythical groundswell of dissatisfaction with evolution among the ranks of mainstream scientists.
When reading this book, be prepared to have the author move you into 21st century approaches to science. It took me a while to adjust to Prothero's firm endorsement of cladistic methods of hypothesizing relationships, and the related consequence that most paleontologists and evolutionary biologists no longer seek to reconstruct direct ancestral (linear) relationships. Instead, in part because of the influence of cladistic thinking, the focus is on lateral ancestry. This may not be what some of us want as an immediate rebuttal to some silly "no intermediates" claim for your nearest creationist, but it IS where today's science is concentrating, and in the long run it is better because cladistic approaches are much better at providing testable hypotheses. Once you get comfortable focusing on lateral ancestors, you realize the great weight of evidence for evolution that is provided by the fossil record. I am realizing that perhaps some of us have inadvertently let the opposition dictate the terms of discussion by their relentless -- and vacuous -- claims of "no intermediate fossils". Although a few spectacular examples such as Tiktaalik provide an immediate answer to such foolishness, Prothero illustrates the immense richness of the fossil record as a whole in documenting multiple stages in the "family bush" of numerous animal groups.
Do I have any quibbles? Just a few. The focus is entirely on animals, so budding paleo-botanists will need to look elsewhere. I would have liked the publisher to be more careful in proofreading, since I found quite a few trivial typographical errors. Beyond that, very little to complain about. Overall, this book is unique in my experience, providing as it does up-to-the-minute actual examples from a true leader in the field, which clearly demonstrate the resounding support for mainstream evolution that is provided by paleontology. The anti-evolution bloggers seem to have been rather silent about this book thus far, and I wonder if Prothero has simply provided such a slam-dunk response that they don't know what to say. We can always hope.
Almost too good. January 30, 2008
11 out of 12 found this review helpful
I have two small criticisms, and one is really almost a compliment.
First, the more I like a book, the more bothered I am by typos and misspellings. I liked this book quite a lot, so the minor errors really stood out to me. Before another printing, it could really use a copy edit.
Second, in a successful effort to be comprehensive (or at least wide-ranging, if not exhaustive), Prothero was sometimes tediuous. Blame that on my status as a layperson. Seeing more than three Latin names in a paragraph makes my eyes start to glaze over. Again, my fault--Prothero is very much on the right track. But I think a second book is needed, one for people like me, and for people like those taken in by Duane Gish's nonsense. It would be shorter, illustration-rich (which this book is, by the way, very much to its credit), and would focus with much greater intensity on the ten or so most convincing, interesting, or memorable points.
I am grateful indeed to have such a detailed resource to refer to if specific issues are raised, but I think that as a book to give to, say, a creationist friend or relative who has been convinced that the fossil record does not support evolution, it could be overwhelming to many readers.
Or perhaps this is the perfect book to provide someone who has already read Shubin's "Your Inner Fish" or Zimmer's "At the Water's Edge" and wishes to learn more.
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