Deep Time: Cladistics, The Revolution in Evolution

Deep Time: Cladistics, The Revolution in Evolution

by HenryGee (Author)

Synopsis

In Deep Time, Henry Gee, assistant editor of Nature, shows us that everything we think we know about evolution is wrong. For a long time, popular scientists have told us that by looking at a fossilised bone we could tell whether it belonged to our ancestors or not. This is not true. In Deep Time, Henry Gee, introduces for the first time in the popular science market a new way of thinking that has revolutionised the way that scientists are approaching the past - Cladistics. Cladistics ignores story-telling and authority and proposes a method based on shared characteristics, rather than ancestry and descent. As a result of using this new method Henry Gee is able to show us the wealth of new ideas that is radically altering our notions of the past: Dinosaurs with feathers; why fish developed fingers; what it means to be human.

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More Information

Format: Paperback
Pages: 272
Edition: New edition
Publisher: Fourth Estate
Published: 05 Mar 2001

ISBN 10: 1857029879
ISBN 13: 9781857029871

Media Reviews
This book will surprise, outrage and delight you - and make you think.' Jared Diamond 'Gee takes the reader inside contemporary palaeontology, from the excitement of a fossil dig with Maeve Leakey to the thousands of carefully stored and catalogued specimens at the Natural History Museum.' New Scientist 'As Gee's brilliant analysis shows, viewed afresh, evolution proves a more interesting and exciting - if more complex - story than we ever thought.' Scotsman
Author Bio
Henry Gee is the chief science writer and assistant editor of Nature. He holds a PhD from Cambridge in Zoology and has previously been Regent's Professor at UCLA. He also contributes to Le Monde, El Pais, Die Zeit and has previously written Before the Backbone: Views on the Origin of the Vertebrates (1996).