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The Crucible of Creation: The Burgess Shale and the Rise of Animals

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Author : Simon Conway Morris
Binding : Paperback
EAN : 9780192862020
Edition : New Ed
ISBN : 0192862022
Label : Oxford Paperbacks
Manufacturer : Oxford Paperbacks
Number of pages : 276
Publication date : 1999-10-07
Publisher : Oxford Paperbacks
Title : The Crucible of Creation: The Burgess Shale and the Rise of Animals
Languages : Array
Number of items : 1
Studio : Oxford Paperbacks

Editorial reviews

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."

THES
"spiritually uplifting"

New York Times Book Review
"The centerpiece of The Crucible of Creation is a descripion, authoritative and readable, of the animals themselves"

New Scientist

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

THES
"spiritually uplifting"

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

Synopsis
'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.

About the Author
Simon Conway Morris is Professor of Palaeontology in the Department of Earth Sciences at Cambridge. He was one of the team of three scientists who uncovered many of the fossils and worked on the interpretation of the Burgess Shale in the 1970s, for which work Stephen Jay Gould said "Palaeontology has no Nobel prizes though I would unhesitatingly award the first to Whittington, Briggs, and Conway Morris. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1990, and presented the Royal
Institution Christmas Lectures in 1996. His search for fossils has taken him all over the world, including China, Mongolia, Australia, and Greenland.

Customer reviews

review by: wbarnim date: 2005-05-06 rating:

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. Very interesting.

review by: brasenose date: 2004-04-21 rating:

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 about 500MYr ago. Not suitable as ageneral text for students of evolution

review by: date: 2001-11-28 rating:

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.

review by: date: 2001-06-18 rating:

Really interesting!
This is really interesting! I am new to this, but looked at "crucible" after "wonderful life" and found the perspective illuminating. The references to Stephen J Gould come think and fast but the book stands on its own.

review by: date: 2000-12-21 rating:

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 and some ideas on the eclogy of the Burgess shale, it is interesting enough.

But Conway Morris is not shy about making his religous and political views clear, and too much of this book reads as an attack on S.J. Gould for what Morris appears to think of as a threateningly atheistic interpretation of the nature of history (please read Gould's absolutely wonderful "Wonderful Life"). Intermixed with the science of this book you'll find statements by theologians used to try to bolster Conway Morris' view of the history of life. As a professional scientist (albeit in a totally different field) I found this to be totally innapropriate, even if it is "just" a popular science book.

If you are fascinated by the Cambrian explosion, then maybe buy the paperback, but be warned: there is a lot of religion mixed in.

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