At the Water's Edge: Fish with Fingers, Whales with Legs, and How Life Came Ashore but Then Went Back to SeaEverybody Out of the Pond At the Water's Edge will change the way you think about your place in the world. The awesome journey of life's transformation from the first microbes 4 billion years ago to Homo sapiens today is an epic that we are only now beginning to grasp. Magnificent and bizarre, it is the story of how we got here, what we left behind, and what we brought with us. We all know about evolution, but it still seems absurd that our ancestors were fish. Darwin's idea of natural selection was the key to solving generation-to-generation evolution -- microevolution -- but it could only point us toward a complete explanation, still to come, of the engines of macroevolution, the transformation of body shapes across millions of years. Now, drawing on the latest fossil discoveries and breakthrough scientific analysis, Carl Zimmer reveals how macroevolution works. Escorting us along the trail of discovery up to the current dramatic research in paleontology, ecology, genetics, and embryology, Zimmer shows how scientists today are unveiling the secrets of life that biologists struggled with two centuries ago. In this book, you will find a dazzling, brash literary talent and a rigorous scientific sensibility gracefully brought together. Carl Zimmer provides a comprehensive, lucid, and authoritative answer to the mystery of how nature actually made itself. |
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Acanthostega Alberch Ambulocetus amniotes amphibians anatomy animals archaeocetes artiodactyls axis baleen whales Basilosaurus biologists Biology birds body bones bottlenose bottlenose dolphins brain branches breathing cetaceans Clack cladistics cladogram Coates common ancestor creature Cuvier Daeschler Darwin Devonian dinosaurs dolphins Dorudon early tetrapods echolocation eggs Elginerpeton embryo Eocene Eusthenopteron evolution evolutionary evolved feet fingers fins fossils gills Gingerich head hind homology Hox genes humans Ichthyostega land legs Lepidosiren limb bud lineages living lobe-fins looked lungfish lungs macroevolution mammals marine reptiles mesenchyme cells mesonychids Milinkovitch million years ago mouth muscles Museum mutations mysticetes natural selection ocean odontocetes origin Owen oxygen Pakicetus Pakistan paleontologists pattern phylogeny primitive proteins ray-finned fishes ribs rock salamanders says scientists shape Shubin skeleton skull species spine stapes swim synapsids tail teeth Tethys tetrapod limb Thewissen tion tissue toothed whales tree turned underwater vertebrates walk