[Fwd: SciAm Review of Schopf's Cradle of Life]

Robert Owen (rowen@technologist.com)
Thu, 28 Oct 1999 21:05:15 -0400

Larry Klaes wrote:

> http://www.sciam.com/1999/1199issue/1199reviews2.html
>
> The Editors Recommend
>
> CRADLE OF LIFE: THE DISCOVERY OF EARTH'S EARLIEST FOSSILS
> J. William Schopf
> Princeton University Press, Princeton, N.J., 1999 ($29.95)
>
> Schopf's gripping tale describes the birth and growth of "a new field
> of science, Precambrian paleobiology." The field arose from "the discovery
> of a vast, ancient, missing fossil record that extends life's roots to
> the most remote reaches of the geologic past."
>
> Schopf, professor of paleobiology at the University of California at
> Los Angeles and director of the Center for the Study of Evolution and
> the Origin of Life there, has had quite a bit to do with the development
> of the field. His account of the work embraces such arresting topics as
> Darwin's dilemma (the question, as Darwin put it, of "why we do not find
> rich fossiliferous deposits belonging to these assumed earliest periods"
> of life and evolution), the origin of life, the roots of human intelligence
> and the evolution of evolution.
>
> Schopf also has a good deal to say about scientists and the way science
> is done. It all makes for a book that bears out his assertion that
> "science is enormously good fun!"
>
> http://www.pupress.princeton.edu/titles/6542.html
>
> http://www.igpp.ucla.edu/cseol/



Robert M. Owen
Director
The Orion Institute
57 W. Morgan Street
Brevard, NC 28712-3659 USA