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Bezig met laden... Turtles as Hopeful Monsters: Origins and Evolution (Life of the Past) (editie 2017)door Olivier Rieppel (Auteur)
Informatie over het werkTurtles as Hopeful Monsters: Origins and Evolution (Life of the Past) door Olivier Rieppel
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Meld je aan bij LibraryThing om erachter te komen of je dit boek goed zult vinden. Op dit moment geen Discussie gesprekken over dit boek. This is an article about turtle evolution, excessively padded with biographical and historical material to turn it into a short book. The information about turtles was technical and interesting, but the reader has to sift through vast quanitites of (mostly irrelevant) text on various researchers (including the author) - their biographies, places of residence and work, politics, field trips, historical context and the like. Turtles only make an appearance halfway through the book. This made the whole book rather tedious despite the interesting examination of turtle evolutionary developmental history. The book also covers the development of evolutionary theory and cladistics. Some sketches and graphics were included, but nothing particularly exciting or useful. OTHER RECOMMENDED BOOK Voyage of the Turtle: In Pursuit of the Earth's Last Dinosaur by Carl Safina geen besprekingen | voeg een bespreking toe
Onderdeel van de uitgeversreeks(en)Life of the Past (2017)
Where do turtles hail from? Why and how did they acquire shells? These questions have spurred heated debate and intense research for more than two hundred years. Brilliantly weaving evidence from the latest paleontological discoveries with an accessible, incisive look at different theories of biological evolution and their proponents, Turtles as Hopeful Monsters tells the fascinating evolutionary story of the shelled reptiles. Paleontologist Olivier Rieppel traces the evolution of turtles from over 220 million years ago, examining closely the relationship of turtles to other reptiles and charting the development of the shell. Turtle issues fuel a debate between proponents of gradual evolutionary change and authors favoring change through bursts and leaps of macromutation. The first book-length popular history of its type, this indispensable resource is an engaging read for all those fascinated by this ubiquitous and uniquely shaped reptile. Geen bibliotheekbeschrijvingen gevonden. |
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Google Books — Bezig met laden... GenresDewey Decimale Classificatie (DDC)597.92Natural sciences and mathematics Zoology Cold-blooded vertebrates, fishes Reptilia ; Reptiles TurtlesLC-classificatieWaarderingGemiddelde:
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Rieppel eventually does get back to turtles, and the long-running controversies about their history, fueled by a simple lack of good fossils. That might have been another point the author could have played up: It doesn't matter how good your analysis is if you simply lack data to process. The question being whether turtles are a very old form of reptile, or whether their emergence occurs much later, at about the same time as the dinosaurs. It wasn't until the great Chinese fossil boom that the long missing "intermediate" forms were discovered (one species of which graces the cover art), and which backed up the statistical and genetic analysis which suggested that turtles are a relatively recent arrival on the scene.
With all that said I really can't recommend this work, which probably needed more hard-headed editing. ( )