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Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #383771 in Books
• Released on: 1999-03-20
• Original language: English
• Dimensions: 1.40 pounds
• Binding: Paperback
• 336 pages

From Amazon.com
What if U.S. history began in 1963, and everything that happened before that year was shrouded in mystery? There would be plenty of events to study, but we wouldn't have a complete picture of the country's past. This is the analogy that paleomicrobiologist J. William Schopf uses to describe the long-missing 85 percent of earth's early fossil record (the puzzle of the missing fossils was known as Darwin's Dilemma). Not until the 1960s did paleobiologists using pickaxes and microscopes find evidence that life began much earlier than previously theorized and that microorganisms were the planet's only inhabitants for most of its existence. And Schopf himself discovered the oldest Precambrian fossils known to science in 1993. Why did it take so long to find these critters?

Though the puzzle of the "missing" early fossil record lived on for more than a hundred years, its solution is now so obvious as to be mundane. The Precambrian world did indeed swarm with living creatures, but until near the close of this vast eon these were microbes and microalgal cells so tiny and fragile that they would never have been unearthed by conventional fossil hunting.

Cradle of Life is a great primer for those interested in the fossil record and its relation to evolutionary theory. Profusely illustrated, this chronicle of amazing discoveries and bizarre questions covers wide ground, including the basics of cell biology and microevolution as well as the careers of the big-name scientists who have set the fossil record straight. And the search continues for the origins of life on earth, as well as the hints of it elsewhere. In a terrifically enlightening epilogue, Schopf shows how even the best scientists have been fooled by geological artifacts that resemble true fossils (as happened with the infamous Martian meteorite "bacteria") and by their own desires to confirm their theories and beliefs about the origins of life. --Therese Littleton

From Publishers Weekly
Until the mid-1950s, biologists, geologists and paleontologists seeking early life's traces had to make do with fossils from the Phanerozoic periods, which represent only 15% of the time that life has existed on Earth. The first 85%Athe Precambrian EraAremained obscure. But since the discovery of "microfossils" in Canada's Gunflint rocks, "Precambrian studies have boomed": these fossil microbes constitute our direct evidence about primordial life. Schopf, a professor at UCLA's Institute of Geophysics, adopts an unusually informal first-person style for this rangy exploration of how Precambrian fossils came to light and what they've taught us. The author covers the history of evolutionary thought and the exploits of field paleontologists, as well as the trajectory of his own career. The casual prose brings both rewards and perils. Most readers will want to know, for example, that in 1924 Aleksandr Oparin explained how simple molecules with carbon, hydrogen, oxygen and nitrogen might have "given rise to the first cells." Few, however, will care that Schopf once lunched with Oparin ("It was thrilling!") or that a limestone slab Schopf found in China "is now embedded in the entry way at our home." What reader needs to be told that, "in science, technical terms are simply shorthand notations for ideas"? Subtract the self-referential elements and Schopf's book is a very clear introduction to the first living things. Final chapters tie these early organisms to the photosynthetic cyanobacteria on today's earth, digress into the history of paleontological frauds and explain what Schopf thinks is right and wrong in NASA's search for fossilized life on Mars. 80 b&w illustrations.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
Schopf, the world's leading expert on Precambrian fossils (0.5 to 4.5 billion years old), has written an exceptional description of the field that is accessible to any educated lay reader. As a graduate student, he helped Harvard biologist Elso Barghoorn prepare the landmark Science article on the famous Canadian Gunflint chert, a seminal Precambrian discovery. His candid description of the competition over who would have the honor of publishing the first major paper is worth the price of the book. Schopf's chapter on the evolution of biochemical pathways is a fascinating and wonderfully clear exposition of a difficult topic. The chapter on fraud in paleontology seems oddly out of place, but descriptions of the meeting between Schopf, Aleksandr Oparin, and Salvador Dali and of Schopf's critical analysis of the Mars rock for indications of early life more than make up for this. Recommended for all libraries.ALloyd Davidson, Seeley G. Mudd Lib. for Science & Engineering, Northwestern Univ., Evanston, IL
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.