Deep time : cladistics, the revolution in evolution

Gee, Henry author

Overview

\"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. This is not true. A fossil cannot answer scientific questions of ascent and descent. Following this logic. Henry Gee shows us that the stories we have told ourselves about the history of life are pure imagination.\" \"Real scientists have put aside such popular bedtime stories about ancestry for decades. Instead, they have adopted a method called cladistics. This simple technique of comparison makes no unsustainable assumptions about ancestry and descent. Cladistics is the true, scientific heart of palaeontology.\" \"Henry Gee shows how cladistics has punctured holes in our cherished view of evolution as progressive, culminating in humanity. He shows how fish evolved legs not to crawl onto land, but to get back underwater as quickly as possible. He shows how dinosaurs evolved feathers long before they became birds - so whatever feathers were used for, it wasn't for flying. Cladistics shows that birds and dinosaurs are intimate relations, and offers the startling suggestion that some dinosaurs could have been the dragons that fell to Earth. In the age-old debate over what came first, the chicken or the egg, cladistics has the definitive answer - the egg.\"--Jacket.

• Publisher: Fourth Estate,Clays Ltd
• Subject: Cladistic analysis. / Evolution (Biology) / Fossils.
• ISBN: 1857029860, 9781857029864

Item info:

1 item available

1 item total in all locations

Holdings :

Call Number	Copies	Material	Location
QH 83 .G44 2000	1	BOOK	AUTOSTORE