Books
9fingers
for books on that level.
- I recently read "Extinction Bad Genes or Bad Luck" by Raup, and
"The Sixth Extinction" by Leaky and Lewin. These were written in the
90's so I'm wondering if Raup's ideas are still relevant today. Are
there any more current books on the subject of extinction?
- I picked up a used copy of "People of the Lake" by Leaky and Lewin.
Since this was written in the 70's I'm wondering if it's still worth
reading. I like their writing style, but I'm wondering if the content
is obsolete.
- I actually enjoy reading coffee table picture books if they're well
written. Whenever I look for books on ancient life, I invariably find
mostly dinosaur books. I've never seen a book of that type devoted to
the Devonian period or Paleocene, for example. Usually those periods
are touched upon at the beginning or end of a dinosaur book. I do have
a copy of "The Book of Life" edited by Gould, which I enjoy, but I'd
like to find books that go into greater depth on the non-Mesozoic
periods.
Thanks in advance for any advice.
David
Perplexed in Peoria
"9fingers" <gd9fi...@gmail.com> wrote in message news:1177093729....@y5g2000hsa.googlegroups.com...
> I have some questions about books. I'm just a layman, so I'm looking
> for books on that level.
>
> - I recently read "Extinction Bad Genes or Bad Luck" by Raup, and
> "The Sixth Extinction" by Leaky and Lewin. These were written in the
> 90's so I'm wondering if Raup's ideas are still relevant today. Are
> there any more current books on the subject of extinction?
There have been two pretty-good books on the Permian extinction recently,
one by Erwin and one by Benton. Worth a read. You can find them
by searching Amazon.
I strongly recommend David Quammen's "Song of the Dodo" for some good
perspectives on the current great extinction, as well as a lot of
excellent writing.
Incidentally, my take on Raup's question "Bad Genes or Bad Luck?" is that
it doesn't matter much for the theory of evolution. Extinction is a
process of species-level selection. Most adaptive evolution takes place
due to organism-level selection, and population sizes are large enough
so that the good/bad genes make a noticeable difference in spite of all
the noise caused by good/bad luck.
John Wilkins
> "9fingers" <gd9fi...@gmail.com> wrote...
Raup's book was the culmination of a longstanding debate about
contingency in the process of evolution. He held the view that most
exitinction has nothing whatsoever to do with differential average
fitnesses between species, and that hence the contrary view, best
represented by Conway Morris, that a certian kind of progress in
evolution is necessry, is false.
Myself, I think that complexity in land-based evolution reached a peak
around the beginnings of the Permian, and has remained pretty constant,
on average, ever since.
--
John S. Wilkins, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Biohumanities Project
University of Queensland - Blog: scienceblogs.com/evolvingthoughts
"He used... sarcasm. He knew all the tricks, dramatic irony, metaphor,
bathos, puns, parody, litotes and... satire. He was vicious."
Rolf
"Perplexed in Peoria" <jimme...@sbcglobal.net> skrev i melding
news:678Wh.5086$2v1....@newssvr14.news.prodigy.net...
>
> "9fingers" <gd9fi...@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:1177093729....@y5g2000hsa.googlegroups.com...
> > I have some questions about books. I'm just a layman, so I'm looking
> > for books on that level.
> >
> > - I recently read "Extinction Bad Genes or Bad Luck" by Raup, and
> > "The Sixth Extinction" by Leaky and Lewin. These were written in the
> > 90's so I'm wondering if Raup's ideas are still relevant today. Are
> > there any more current books on the subject of extinction?
>
> There have been two pretty-good books on the Permian extinction recently,
> one by Erwin and one by Benton. Worth a read. You can find them
> by searching Amazon.
>
Being a layman myself I am not so sure, I bought the Erwin book because it
looked interesting, but found it very boring.
I guess there is nothing wrong with the book itself, it is just that there
is too much detailed information and a lot of guesswork.
To me, it seeemed like the essence was that yes, there were some extinction
events at certain times that may have been caused by this or that and had
some consequences. And yes, I belive that may all be very true, but then
what, unless I should happen to be a scientist with a professional interest
in the subject?
After reading the entire book (though I may have skipped some pages) I had
to ask myself: What did I learn?
You may have a particular interest in extinction and in that case I suppose
you will have to pursue that, but for a good overview of evolution I would
recommend Richard Fortey's 'Life - An Unathorised Biography.'
9fingers
wrote:
> "9fingers" <gd9fing...@gmail.com> wrote in messagenews:1177093729....@y5g2000hsa.googlegroups.com...
Somehow my response posts got lost. Thanks for the suggestions.
9fingers
> Perplexed in Peoria <jimmene...@sbcglobal.net> wrote:
>
>
>
What do you mean by "complexity...reached a peak"? Do you mean the
complexity of individual species, or complexity in the variety of
life?
9fingers
> "Perplexed in Peoria" <jimmene...@sbcglobal.net> skrev i meldingnews:678Wh.5086$2v1....@newssvr14.news.prodigy.net...
>
> > "9fingers" <gd9fing...@gmail.com> wrote in message
Thanks for the review. I'm not more interested in extinction than
ancient life in general. I just never thought of extinction as a
separate subject before I read Raup's book.
While browsing on Amazon.com I noticed that there's a new book coming
out later this year called "Rise of the Mammals: The Paleocene and
Eocene Periods" by Thom Holmes.
John Wilkins
> What do you mean by "complexity...reached a peak"? Do you mean the
> complexity of individual species, or complexity in the variety of
> life?
The latter. A few statistical deviants like hominids aside, the degree
of overall complexity reached a plateau in the Permian, and we've just
been recovering from the occasional loss of diversity ever since.