J. G. M. Thewissen

This is a delightful book: full colour illustrations, diagrams, maps, beautifully detailed science writing and an author who assumes his readers are intelligent and interested.

This book reads something like a detective novel. The author starts off with one of his (presumably failed) fossil finding expeditions in Pakistan, 1991, what he found there, the implications and what happened next. Thewissen manages to include biographical "stories" without coming across as self-important (he is humble and rather amusing), and gives credit where credit is due. All these biographical anecdotes are from his field expeditions and the people he dealt with - essentially where he went, why, what issues he had, what he found and why this was significant - fit into the whole book and the science sections quite well. These anecdotes were quite interesting and I looked forward to reading them. You get to find out what a paleontologist does when he has made an important fossil discovery but doesn't have enough funds to fly it back the laboratory; and what happens when said paleontologist gets too impatient to dig out a fossil and yanks it out of the ground instead.

Besides the enlightening anecdotes, Thewissen discusses the specifics of whale evolution using fossil, biological (physiologica, cladistic and DNA where possible) and chemical evidence, usually in the order in which the discoveries were made. All the relevant science from different fields is nicely explained withouth being tedious or overly technical (except the anatomy parts, which can't really be helped). The author is also careful in spearating speculation from what can reasonably be assumed from the evidence.

Thewissen has summarised the remarkable progress that has been made in terms of our understanding of whale origins - with many "intermediate" fossils, clear-cut functional links, and the beginnings of the molecuar mechanisms that drive it all. Thewissen takes the reader on an mystery-solving adventure that eventually helps us understand the evolution of whales from small hooved, land animals that resembled mouse deer and requiring fresh water for drinking, to our current salt-water, fishy-shaped giants with flippers.

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For many years it was an accepted idea that whales evolved into sea-going creatures from terrestrial mammals, but physical evidence was scarce since so few fossils of ancient cetaceans were known. Then in 1991, while paleontologist Hans Thewissen was on a dig in Pakistan for unrelated land-dwelling mammals, he made a serendipitous discovery that not only began to fill in some of the holes in the fossil record, but also reveal the birthplace of whales. Thewissen's subsequent digs have unearthed even greater treasures. You need not be a paleontologist, biologist or anatomist to fully appreciate and devour this fascinating look at the latest discoveries in cetacean evolution.… (meer)