Gorgon: Paleontology, Obsession, and the Greatest Catastrophe in Earth's History

When people hear the term "mass extinction" they usually think of the demise of the dinosaurs, sixty-five million years ago in the Cretaceous-Tertiary extinction — or K/T event, as paleontologists abbreviate it. It is certainly the most famous die-off of organisms, largely due to the mediagenic nature of dinosaurs and lurid images of comets smacking into the planet, ringing it like a bell. But in extinction severity, the K/T extinction was a sideshow compared to the main event of the Permian extinction.

Almost exactly 250 million years ago, at the end of the Permian period, close to 95% of life on earth died. Afterward the oceans were devoid of life, the land barren. Rivers turned from familiar single-channeled meandering forms into braided streams, as plants no longer held the topsoil together. Just as the K/T extinction opened habitats that were filled by a subsequent radiation of mammals, the Permian event may have helped pave the way for dinosaurs.

This is how paleontology is usually reported in the popular press, with grand vivid strokes and broad easy conclusions. But as University of Washington paleontologist Peter Ward well knows, field paleontology is a very different world from the paragraphs above. It is a world of tedium and small discoveries, of burning sun and gnawing ticks, of car troubles and inclement weather. While ostensibly discussing the world of 250 million years ago, Gorgon is just as much about the world of the 1990s. Ward traveled to South Africa several times in this period to study the Permian/Triassic boundary recorded in the Karoo desert, and Gorgon chronicles those journeys. We see South Africa change from visit to visit as apartheid crumbles and street gangs gain power. A Rube Goldberg-esque laboratory accident at Caltech destroys a season’s work, which mandates another trip to Africa to collect more samples. Horrible hotels and even more horrible meals offer trials of their own. And at the end of the day, clear conclusions rarely offer themselves out of the collected data. This is the world of Gorgon, vividly and eloquently captured by Ward; field science in all its warts and glory.

As to the title, Gorgon was a lion-sized predatory reptile that lived in the Permian, though it is not a major character in the book. Instead, Ward thinks of Gorgon as a metaphor for the extinction event itself; like Gorgon, the extinction captures the imagination but little is actually known about it. Was it a fast or a gradual event? What caused it? Why did certain animals skate through it unscathed, while so many others died? As Ward reveals, there is little consensus even among paleontologists who study this period. Ward’s data strongly suggests it was a rapid event geologically, though not instantaneous. Some paleontologists, convinced the cause must be a meteor or comet, look only for supporting results while ignoring other data; after all, scientists are people too. Recently there was yet another report of a group claiming to have found a crater created at the end of the Permian, though the data are equivocal at best.

Written for a broad audience, Gorgon has more in common with John McPhee’s geology books like Rising from the Plains than it does with scholarly bone catalogs. This is a book about people, frustration, curiosity, friendship, family, and change, all set against a paleontological backdrop. It is uncommon to find a science book that is a pleasure to read not just for the joy of gaining academic knowledge, but for the romance of words and thoughts. Peter Ward’s gift for writing makes Gorgon such a book.

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