Synopses & Reviews
This text is designed for students and anyone else with an interest in the history of life on our planet. The author describes the biological evolution of Earth’s organisms, and reconstructs their adaptations to the life they led, and the ecology and environment in which they functioned. On the grand scale, Earth is a constantly changing planet, continually presenting organisms with challenges. Changing geography, climate, atmosphere, oceanic and land environments set a stage in which organisms interact with their environments and one another, with evolutionary change an inevitable result. The organisms themselves in turn can change global environments: oxygen in our atmosphere is all produced by photosynthesis, for example. The interplay between a changing Earth and its evolving organisms is the underlying theme of the book.
The book has a dedicated website which explores additional enriching information and discussion, and provides or points to the art for the book and many other images useful for teaching. See: www.wiley.com/go/cowen/historyoflife.
Review
Praise for the New Edition:
"His material is accessible to even the uninitiated, but is still able to include fairly nuanced arguments. Mr. Cowen's gentle wit is much appreciated. This is a wonderful text, written in an engaging style by an author with both deep and broad knowledge of the history of life."
Emily Buchholtz, Wellesley College
"...the History of Life is a superb book which has no peer among published texts describing the macroevolution of life on Earth and the abiotic and biotic factors that have influenced the evolutionary history of living organisms."
Robert McMahon, U of Texas at Arlington
Praise for the Third Edition:
Anybody interested in the evolution of the Earth and its living organisms, especially animals, will find the content of this book useful and interesting. [...] I would recommend the book to those readers who would like to gain a basic knowledge on the Earth's evolution accompanied with detailed description of the evolution of animals.
L. Natr, Photosynthetica 40
'Should be compulsory for everyone who wants to call him/herself a palaeontologist.' J.W.F Reumer, PalArch's Journal of Vertebrate Palaeontology, (2006)
Review
“Though biogeographical patterns take a backseat to the grand narrative of descent, as an entry‐level textbook this is hard to surpass.” (Frontiers of biogeography, 5 February 2013)
Review
andldquo;A well-crafted, intelligent, and probing series of papers by leading experts addressing the latest advances in the big transformations in our evolutionary history. This book will enthral anyone interested in learning about the big changes in our deep, distant evolution from fishes to land animals, the origins of reptiles, birds, and mammals, and how cutting-edge multidisciplinary approaches are used to solve evolutionary problems.andrdquo;
Review
andldquo;This book honors the great Farish A. Jenkins Jr., who studied macroevolutionary transitions in vertebrates by combining a wealth of data from fossils, dissections, experimental analyses of behavior, evolutionary data, and more to reconstruct major changes in form and function, with a strong biological focus. Jenkins was so innovative, so big-question-oriented, and so influential that a book dedicated to him and the kinds of questions in which he was interested is not just appropriate, but essential. The book is timely, summarizing and giving new perspectives on the greatest transitions in vertebrate evolution. The questions are huge. The authors are simply the best in the field. A landmark work from a star-studded cast of scientists.andrdquo;
Review
andldquo;This book will be of broad general interest to vertebrate biologists, indispensable for vertebrate functional and evolutionary morphologists, and essential reading for the next generation of vertebrate organismal biologists. The editors have done an enormous service to the field by collecting these thorough, incisive papers. One feels extremely invigorated and excited about what might be done next. Great Transformations will exert a strong impact on research agendas.andrdquo;
Synopsis
The living world today contains all kinds of creatures that do unexpected things-- we have come to expect that there were complex and unusual ways of life in the past, and that evolution took some unexpected turns at times. Entertainingly written for students,
History of Life 4th Edition takes you to the edge of current knowledge.
This text is aimed at students and anyone interested in the history of life on our planet. It explores the "whys" of events that occurred and, in this newest edition, it takes a closer look at the evolution of the physical earth and the strong interactions between organisms and environment. The book’s coverage includes geography, climate, atmosphere, ocean, and land (a changing stage) while following the interplay between organisms. Also new to this edition is a dedicated website which explores additional environmental factors and supplemental topics, and provides interactive exercises, a detailed glossary, key links and all art in downloadable form. The art is also available to instructors on CD-ROM in PowerPoint and Jpeg formats.
Synopsis
How did flying birds evolve from running dinosaurs, terrestrial trotting tetrapods from swimming fish, and whales return to swim in the sea?and#160; These are some of the great transformations in the history of life; events that have captured the imagination of scientists and the general public alike. At first glance, these major evolutionary events seem utterly impossible.and#160; The before and after look so fundamentally different that the great transformations of the history of life not only seem impossible, but unknowable. The 500 million year history of vertebrates is filled with change and, as a consequence, every living species contains within its structure, DNA, and fossil record, a narrative of them.
and#160;
A battery of new techniques and approaches, from diverse fields of inquiry, are now being marshaled to explore classic questions of evolution.and#160; These approaches span multiple levels of biological organization, from DNA sequences, to organs, to the physiology and ecology of whole organisms.and#160; Analysis of developmental systems reveals deep homologies of the mechanisms that pattern organs as different as bird wings and fish fins.and#160; Whales with legs are one of a number of creatures that tell us of the great transformations in the history of life.and#160; Expeditions have discovered worms with a kind of head, fishes with elbows, wrists, and necks; feathered dinosaurs, and human precursors to name only a few.and#160; Indeed, in the last 20 years, paleontologists have discovered more creatures informative of evolutionary transitions than in the previous millennium.and#160;
and#160;
The Great Transformations captures the excitement of these new discoveries by bringing diverse teams of renowned scientists together to attack particular transformations, and to do so in a contents organized by body part--head, neck, fins, limbs, and then the entire bauplan.and#160; It is a work that will transform evolutionary biology and paleontology.
About the Author
Kenneth P. Dial is professor of biology at the University of Montana and founding director of the universityandrsquo;s Flight Laboratory and Field Station at Fort Missoula.Neil Shubin is senior advisor to the president and the Robert R. Bensley Distinguished Service Professor of Anatomy at the University of Chicago. His books include The Universe Within: Discovering the Common History of Rocks, Planets, and People and Your Inner Fish: A Journey into the 3.5-Billion-Year History of the Human Body.Elizabeth L. Brainerd is professor of medical science and director of the XROMM Technology Development Project at Brown University.
Table of Contents
Introduction
Part I Origins and Transformations
1 Origin of the Vertebrate Dentition: Teeth Transform Jaws into a Biting Force
Moya Meredith Smith and Zerina Johanson
2 Flexible Fins and Fin Rays as Key Transformations in Ray-Finned Fishes
George V. Lauder
3 Major Transformations in Vertebrate Breathing Mechanisms
Elizabeth L. Brainerd
4 Origin of the Tetrapod Neck and Shoulder
Neil Shubin, Edward B. Daeschler, and Farish A. Jenkins Jr.
5 Origin of the Turtle Body Plan
Ann Campbell Burke
6 Anatomical Transformations and Respiratory Innovations of the Archosaur Trunk
Leon Claessens
7 Evolution of Hind Limb Posture in Triassic Archosauriforms
Corwin Sullivan
8 Fossils, Trackways, and Transitions in Locomotion: A Case Study of Dimetrodon
James A. Hopson
9 Respiratory Turbinates and the Evolution of Endothermy
in Mammals and Birds
Tomasz Owerkowicz, Catherine Musinsky, Kevin M. Middleton, and A. W. Crompton
10 Origin of the Mammalian Shoulder
Zhe-Xi Luo
11 Evolution of the Mammalian Nose
A.W. Crompton, Catherine Musinsky, and Tomasz Owerkowicz
12 Placental Evolution in Therian Mammals
Kathleen K. Smith
13 Going from Small to Large: Mechanical Implications of Body Size Diversity in Terrestrial Mammals
Andrew A. Biewener
14 Evolution of Whales from Land to Sea
Philip D. Gingerich
15 Major Transformations in the Evolution of Primate Locomotion
John G. Fleagle and Daniel E. Lieberman
Part II Perspectives and Approaches
16 Ontogenetic and Evolutionary Transformations: Ecological Significance of Rudimentary Structures
Kenneth P. Dial, Ashley M. Heers, and Terry R. Dial
17 Skeletons in Motion: An Animatorandrsquo;s Perspective on Vertebrate Evolution
Stephen M. Gatesy and David B. Baier
18 Developmental Mechanisms of Morphological Transitions: Examples from Archosaurian Evolution
Arhat Abzhanov
19 Microevolution and the Genetic Basis of Vertebrate Diversity: Examples from Teleost Fishes
Sydney A. Stringham and Michael D. Shapiro
20 The Age of Transformation: The Triassic Period and the Rise of Todayand#39;s Land Vertebrate Fauna
Kevin Padian and Hans-Dieter Sues
21 How Do Homoplasies Arise? Origin and Maintenance of Reproductive Modes in Amphibians
Marvalee H. Wake
22 Rampant Homoplasy in Complex Characters: Repetitive Convergent Evolution of Amphibian Feeding Structures
David B. Wake, David C. Blackburn, and R. Eric Lombard
Contributors
Index