The 1872–1876 expedition of HMS Challenger invented the science of oceanography. I previously discussed this remarkable voyage in my review of Doug Macdougall’s Endless Novelties of Extraordinary Interest. Since that book nourished but did not yet sate my curiosity, I vowed to read Full Fathom 5000, a promise I am making good on here. Focusing on the wondrous animals the expedition brought up from the deep, this engagingly written book provides a welcome additional angle.

Full Fathom 5000: The Expedition of HMS Challenger and the Strange Animals It Found in the Deep Sea, written by Graham Bell, published by Oxford University Press in July 2022 (hardback, 360 pages)

Biologist Graham Bell is based at McGill University in Montreal, Canada, where he teaches, amongst others, a zoology course. Since so many of the main groups of animals live in the sea, preparing for this course meant reading marine biology literature and thus encountering the unavoidable references to the Challenger expedition. Before long, he found himself making notes about the animals discovered, tracing the voyage on a map, and scrutinizing species lists until, rather amusingly I think, “it became easier to write the book than not” (p. 2). Most literature on the expedition focuses on the shore visits in exotic places. Bell instead largely omits these and puts the animals centre stage. The result is a nicely paced and balanced book that goes through the trip chronologically, discussing notable animal discoveries. He also gives surprising insights into the trip, adds relevant digressions about what we have learned since, and presents it all with the occasional well-placed dash of humour.

In the 1800s, we had no good idea about the deep sea and whether anything lived there. A key figure and spiritual forefather to the Challenger expedition was Edward Forbes. As he experimented with dredges, he soon noticed a vertical zonation to the organisms he retrieved and, plotting animal abundance against depth, postulated that no animals lived below ~300 fathoms (~550 m), which became known as the azoic hypothesis. Powell points out in Mysteries of the Deep that there was mounting evidence to the contrary that was ignored, while Bell here writes such reports were anecdotal and poorly documented. Regardless, there arose the idea of a systematic survey. Though Forbes would not live to see it, these plans were ultimately given logistical and financial backing by both the Royal Society and the Admiralty who commanded the Royal Navy.

After a brief first part that introduces these and other aspects (the committees involved, the ship, the crew, and the scientists), the bulk of the book takes you through the different legs of the cruise in 14 chapters. A menagerie of previously unknown animals was hauled up from the deep over the next 3½ years. Gorgonians (deep-water corals) whose polyps can live in such entangled colonies that “our unremarkable, unchallenged notion of the individual loses meaning” (p. 52). Barnacles that take sexual dimorphism to its logical extreme, with males little more than swimming testes that turn into an accessory reproductive organ after attaching themselves to females. Tripod fish that stand above the sediment on greatly elongated fins. Pond skaters that are rare examples of marine insects living on the sea surface. Holothurians (sea cucumbers) that showed up everywhere, indicating that deep-sea biogeography is very different from that on land. Polychaete worms that live inside sponges, their branching body all anus and one head. There lived animals in the deep alright.

“A menagerie of previously unknown animals was hauled up from the deep over the next 3½ years. […] There lived animals in the deep alright.”

These entries alternate with scenes from life on board. Several of the scientists and officers kept journals and afterwards wrote travel narratives on which Bell draws. Next to the successes, it also shows the boredom that set in as the expedition was a rather dull, rinse-and-repeat affair of taking depth soundings, measuring underwater temperature, and sampling the fauna with dredges and trawls at 348 locations (so-called stations) around the globe. By the time they reached the Central Pacific, some 2½ years into the trip, the naturalists were ready to go home, and journal entries sometimes passed over whole legs of the trip. I now better understand why Macdougall omitted the remainder of the expedition from Endless Novelties of Extraordinary Interest. The ~200 crew members were virtually all illiterate, with the exception (as far as we know) of assistant steward Joseph Matkin. A trove of letters home was discovered in 1980 and published in an annotated book. Bell gratefully mines that unique source for the proverbial “unauthorized version of the voyage” (p. 37). Thanks to Matkin’s letters, we know that the crew were in the dark as to their mission, other than what they had heard through the grapevine, something lead naturalist Charles Wyville Thomson tried to remedy through a lecture. Matkin also has an interesting explanation for why desertion rates remained high throughout the expedition: whenever passing navy vessels were implored to spare some men, they offloaded their most troublesome sailors.

There is a social justice streak running through this book, with Bell pointing out issues so evident in hindsight. There was extreme income inequality between the upper echelons and the crew, making this “not exclusively a modern phenomenon” (p. 43). Workplace accidents that would grind an operation to a halt today were an accepted fact of life. Probably the most tragic incident shows the impact of social class. When two people were urgently called to meet HMS Challenger at the island of St. Vincent to replace lost crew members, they arrived on the same boat, both short of money. But whereas the new schoolmaster was denied help by the British Consul, went looking for food, got lost, and died, likely of heat and thirst; the new sublieutenant was provided with board and lodging: “he was, after all, an officer and a gentleman” (p. 117).

Bell furthermore offers interesting asides on science history. One example is the infamous Bathybius haeckeli episode. One of Challenger’s goals was to confirm the existence of a primordial goo, a purported missing link between living and non-living matter that Thomas Huxley had noticed in bottled samples of deep-sea sediment. Try as they might, the Challenger scientists could not find it, until the onboard chemist John Young Buchanan discovered it was instead an inorganic precipitate that formed when seawater reacted with the preservatives used. Another example is how the aforementioned azoic hypothesis was revised repeatedly. Though the original formulation had been decisively disproven, could there still be a much greater depth below which life could not exist? When they accidentally found one of Earth’s deepest marine trenches, now called the Challenger Deep, they inexplicably deployed neither dredge nor trawl to check. Or could life perhaps survive both near the surface and at the bottom, but not in between? Just as important as what the scientists caught, is what they missed. Their equipment was rudimentary, unable to sample both very small organisms and the gelatinous creatures we now know occur throughout the water column.

“Though the Challenger expedition could have ended up as yet another forgotten Victorian oddity, it instead became legendary.”

Given that Bell authored the textbook The Evolution of Life, I should not have been surprised that he makes nicely formulated, thought-provoking observations on evolution. He mentions its tendency to modify existing structures rather than innovate completely novel ones. He flips the script on our perception of gelatinous creatures. Given that the deep sea is the largest habitat on the planet, rather than asking what might be the advantages of this lifestyle, we should perhaps consider it “the default option for animals. [Only] in special circumstances, where waves or tides or currents or gravity make it necessary, a robust body will evolve” (p. 280). Then there is the difficult question of which features to use in taxonomic classification. The expedition dredged up both the worm-like Glandiceps and the colonial, tentacle-bearing Cephalodiscus. Despite looking nothing alike, later anatomical investigation showed they are both hemichordates. “When we are trying to work out the relationships among animals […] should we place more importance on obvious features that are plain to see, such as a wormlike body versus tentacles, or on the ground plan of the body, such as two compartments versus three?” (p. 289). And when judging the relatedness of two corals with similar stony skeletons but different tentacles, which character do you use? Henry Moseley, the Challenger scientist most interested in corals, united the two groups based on their skeletons, whereas today they have been separated based on their tentacles. Bell reminds you that both ancestry and convergent evolution can result in character resemblance between different groups, complicating the science of taxonomy.

The final three chapters briefly trace what happened to the ship, the people, and the collected animals. They offer a gentle goodbye for the reader, as the trip ended rather abruptly: the crew disbanded, the six scientists never met each other again, and the ship, as opposed to e.g. the further adventures of HMS Erebus, was mothballed and unceremoniously scrapped for copper in 1921. Though the Challenger expedition could have ended up as yet another forgotten Victorian oddity, it instead became legendary. Bell sees two reasons for this. First was John Murray who played a minor role while on board but afterwards became the driving force that saw the project through to completion in 15 years, ensuring specimens were distributed globally to relevant specialists, data was analysed, and results were written up. Second was the worldwide dissemination to institutes and libraries of the massive 50-volume Challenger Report, grudgingly financed by the Admiralty.

Bell has gone to great lengths, consulting both primary and secondary literature regarding the expedition, as well as modern research on many of the animal groups discussed. In following the expedition chronologically from beginning to end, it provided the full meal that Macdougall’s Endless Novelties of Extraordinary Interest did not quite give me. The two books nevertheless stand shoulder to shoulder, each providing its own interesting and worthwhile perspective on the Challenger expedition.

Disclosure: The publisher provided a review copy of this book. The opinion expressed here is my own, however.

Bell’s Full Fathom 5000

Other recommended books mentioned in this review:

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If you have any interest in oceanography and its history, you will have heard of the Challenger expedition. An early example of government-funded big science, it saw a crew of six scientists and more than 250 sailors and officers of the British Navy aboard HMS Challenger circumnavigate the globe during a 3½-year expedition from late 1872 to 1876. Focused on deep-sea exploration, it is considered the birth of oceanography. But given it was not the first nor the last oceangoing expedition, why has this one achieved such legendary status? Here, earth scientist Doug Macdougall discusses its many and diverse discoveries and shows how scientists have since built on them.

Endless Novelties of Extraordinary Interest: The Voyage of H.M.S. Challenger and the Birth of Modern Oceanography, written by Doug Macdougall, published by Yale University Press in August 2019 (hardback, 257 pages)

The Challenger expedition has featured multiple times on this blog already with several books briefly mentioning it or featuring it more in-depth. I have been meaning to get around to Endless Novelties of Extraordinary Interest for a while, if only because of its intriguing title; words that, we soon learn, were penned by the expedition’s scientific leader Charles Wywille Thomson. Macdougall is an emeritus earth scientist at the Scripps Institute of Oceanography and seems the right person for the job, having previously written books on the history of disciplines such as glaciology and geochronology.

The aim of the Challenger expedition was to collect basic oceanographic data in oceans around the world. Every few hundred miles the ship would stop at a so-called station to measure water depth, water temperature and velocity at different depths, collect sediment samples, and catch a sample of the animals and plants living at different depths using townets and dredges. A large part of the expedition was a matter of rinse and repeat. However, oceanic islands acted as a magnet on the scientists and much space is given here to describing what they encountered there.

The book’s approach quickly becomes clear. Though it proceeds largely chronologically, the focus is less on the journey and the experiences of the people on board, and more on the science. Following some preliminary material that includes a listing of the main characters and a three-page map that shows the ship’s route, Macdougall delves straight into the first example of a scientific topic for which the Challenger expedition laid the foundations: the study of cosmic dust gathered from ocean sediments. It is a bit of an incongruous starting point, as in chapter 2 he backtracks to provide a biographic introduction to the six scientists on board and the overall aims for the expedition. After this, each chapter is written around a few observations or research questions that were particularly relevant to that leg of the journey.

“The aim of the Challenger expedition was to collect basic oceanographic data in oceans around the world […] A large part of [it] was a matter of rinse and repeat.”

There is much material Macdougall can draw on. After the expedition ended, its scientists would study the vast trove of data, samples, and specimens for 19 years with the help of a growing international network of other scholars. The results were published from 1880 to 1895 in a report series that would span 50(!) volumes. It was a show of government support that would leave many scientists today green with envy. Some examples of the many questions studied included the nature of the ocean floor. The thinking was that all of the world’s oceans were covered in layers of muddy chalk, the same material as the fossil shells making up the famous white cliffs of Dover. Soon enough, however, the scientists found different sediments, a prelude to the era of deep-sea drilling that has taught us so much. Remarkably, the seafloor sediment maps they produced for the Challenger Report have not changed much in their rough outlines since. Another open question was whether the deep sea was home to primitive organisms or even “living fossils”, but no such animals were found. They did find many bioluminescent organisms, although opinions differed as to what caused this; the pioneering work of Raphaël Dubois, who illuminated the biochemistry underlying this phenomenon, was still in the future. Finally, the scientists constantly dredged up manganese nodules. These potato-sized, black, spherical objects were rich in metals and the Challenger scientists worked out that these grew extremely slowly when dissolved manganese precipitated around objects such as shark teeth, bits of whalebone, or pieces of pumice. Though interest in them gradually waned after the expedition, the idea of mining the deep sea for metals has captured the imagination again in recent decades, .

Macdougall is not content with just relating the past and continuously tells what has become of some of the locations the expedition visited, or what our current understanding is of the topics they studied. It is an approach the book shares with Richard Corfield’s The Silent Landscape from 2003, the previous book on the Challenger expedition for a general audience. One example is penguin evolution. Anatomist Morrison Watson studied the penguins that had been collected and concluded that the group must have diverged early on in bird evolution. However, in the absence of fossils, he would not speculate further on the matter. Since then, we have filled in many gaps and have a better picture of just how diverse ancient penguindom was. The scientists were also fascinated by birds of paradise but were only able to find a few species. It took until 2004 for a National Geographic expedition to find and photograph all 39 existing species. Another hotly contested topic at the time was the nature of coral reefs and how these formed and grew. A young upstart by the name of Charles Darwin had his ideas, but his views were not accepted by everyone, including Challenger scientist John Murray. Whereas Murray argued that reefs only formed where debris had built up to create shallow areas, time has proven correct Darwin’s idea of coral atolls forming around sinking underwater volcanoes.

“Macdougall is not content with just relating the past and continuously tells what has become of some of the locations the expedition visited, or what our current understanding is of the topics they studied.”

Of course, when writing about a historical episode such as the Challenger expedition today, you have to address past attitudes and ideas. Many of these are at least objectionable if not outright repugnable to us now. I feel Macdougall strikes the right balance, providing the context while neither defending nor condemning the people of the past. This plays out most visibly in the chapter on anthropology. The Challenger scientists were burdened by all the baggage and prejudices that characterised the cultural imperialism of the time: native people were considered inferior savages and European culture de facto superior—and the scientists could not help themselves constantly remarking on this. Yet, at the same time, they were genuinely fascinated by the people they encountered and by what they considered primitive roots of Western culture in native practices. Flawed? Yes, and of its time. Macdougall is similarly upfront about the attitude towards animals. Gathering specimens for museum collections meant killing animals and their journals betrayed “no hint of contrition” (p. 203) in doing so. Lastly, the mission did have ulterior motives; this was also an imperial project. The laying of underwater telegraph cables required an understanding of the seafloor and it did not hurt that the expedition projected power and prestige towards competing seafaring nations. However, Macdougall thinks that we should not be too cynical about this. This was not some thinly veiled excuse for Britain to expand its empire; this was first and foremost a scientific expedition to better understand the ocean. Even the discovery of phosphate deposits on Christmas Island, which would earn the British government more in mining royalties than the whole expedition ever cost, was a clear case of serendipity. As the author points out, the ship never visited the island and this discovery happened years later during background research for the Challenger Report.

I enjoyed Macdougall’s thematic approach to the subject and I think he successfully shows why the Challenger expedition is considered groundbreaking. That said, I do have some criticism. The presentation of biographical information in chapter 2 is a bit messy: dates of birth and death are not systematically presented and sometimes lacking, and only a few portraits are included, meaning major protagonists such as John Murray and the fascinating Henry Moseley remain faceless names. We also rather abruptly leave the expedition somewhere in the Pacific. The trip out of the Pacific, the multiple stops in southern South America, and the return trip through the Atlantic do not feature here. Readers who are new to the topic might also want to consider the National Maritime Museum’s book The Challenger Expedition. Published in 2022 to commemorate the 150th anniversary of the expedition’s start, it offers a richly illustrated general introduction. I found my interest nourished but not yet sated. Early on, when reflecting on the contents of the Challenger Report, Macdougall points out that “in terms of sheer volume, biology won, hands down” (p. 59). As such, future me has reviewed the 2022 book Full Fathom 5000 as it promises to review all the strange animals the scientists found in the deep sea.

Disclosure: The publisher provided a review copy of this book. The opinion expressed here is my own, however.

Endless Novelties of Extraordinary Interest

Other recommended books mentioned in this review:

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Marine biologist Helen Scales returns for her third book with Bloomsbury’s popular science imprint Bloomsbury Sigma. After shells and fish, she now drags the reader down into the darkest depths of the deep sea. Both a beautifully written exploration of the ocean’s otherworldly wonders and a searing exposé of the many threats they face, The Brilliant Abyss is Scales’s most strident book to date.

The Brilliant Abyss: True Tales of Exploring the Deep Sea, Discovering Hidden Life and Selling the Seabed, written by Helen Scales, published in Europe by Bloomsbury Publishing in March 2021 (hardback, 352 pages)

Sir David Attenborough has probably said it best: “No one will protect what they do not care about; and no one will care about what they have never experienced“. Both Scales and the publisher have taken that message to heart and the book is neatly designed. As with her previous book, illustrator Aaron John Gregory is involved again, this time providing two beautiful end plates and an eye-catching cover, while the colour plate section contains some outstanding photos. But at the heart of The Brilliant Abyss is Scales’s captivating writing.

First, consider the landscape. As she explains, the seabed, shaped by plate tectonics, is far from a featureless bathtub. Spreading centres create mid-ocean ridges, colossal mountain ranges that girdle the planet, while subduction zones where oceanic crust plunges back into the planet form deep-sea trenches of terrifying depths. The abyssal plain in between is studded with active or extinct underwater volcanoes that form seamounts of great import to marine life. Wherever magma approaches the surface, percolating seawater becomes superheated, rising back to the surface laden with dissolved minerals and metals. They form hydrothermal vents: towering structures that are home to unique fauna and are “the deep-sea equivalent of hot springs and geysers on land” (p. 97). Woven throughout is a history of scientific exploration, from the first oceanographic expeditions to today’s robotic submersibles, and from pioneering deep-sea explorers to today’s trench-diving billionaires.

Otherworldly as the landscape is, the real stars of this realm are its fauna. Scales’s knowledge and love of marine biology shine through here, as she populates the pages with a bewildering cast of creatures. Notable examples of bizarre deep-sea fishes are included, but she gives you so much more. Whale carcasses, so-called whale falls, become complete ecosystems, home to bone-eating Osedax worms with unusual sex lives. Large gelatinous members of the drifting plankton, such as colonial siphonophores and giant larvaceans, form previously underappreciated links in the food web. Hydrothermal vents are crowded with worms and furry Yeti crabs that domesticate symbiotic bacteria capable of chemosynthesis, the “dark alternative to photosynthesis” (p. 104). Meanwhile, one species of snail makes its shell out of iron! And then there are the corals. No, not the familiar tropical corals who “hog not only the sunlight but the limelight” (p. 129); the lesser-known cold-water corals that occur at great depths and grow even slower.

“[…] the real stars of this realm are its fauna […] whale falls become complete ecosystems, home to bone-eating Osedax worms with unusual sex lives. […] Meanwhile, one species of snail makes its shell out of iron!”

And if the intrinsic value of biodiversity does not sway you, Scales is no stranger to discussing the deep’s instrumental values. The capacity of seawater to absorb heat and carbon dioxide. The role of global oceanic currents in regulating our climate. Or the carbon pump provided by marine snow; the constant rain of dead plankton, fish poop, and other organic debris that descends into the depths. And what of the quest for new classes of biological compounds with antiviral, anti-bacterial, or anti-cancer properties that could form the pharmaceutical drugs and antibiotics of the future?

Two-thirds through the book Scales switches gears. Now that she has your attention, it is time to highlight the many dangers the deep faces. Deep-sea fishing targets long-lived, slow-growing species such as orange roughy. Vulnerable seamounts with millennia-old corals are destroyed by trawlers in a matter of hours. Meanwhile, the promise of food for everyone is not being met. Vast catch volumes are being turned into fish meal for aquaculture and pet food, or questionable nutraceuticals such as omega-3-oil supplements. And where Daniel Pauly already gave me reason to be suspicious of the Marine Stewardship Council, Scales lays bare their dubious raison d’être: funded by royalties from sales of their eco-labelled fish, there is an imperative to keep certifying fisheries. She calls their scandalous certification of the “recovering” orange roughy population a “case of a dead cat bouncing, with a green-washed eco-label tied to its collar” (p. 204).

Scales made me shudder with her stories of pollution, especially the persistent legacy of the large-scale dumping of chemical weapons. But the topic that concerns her most is the looming spectre of deep-sea mining. Though much is still on the drawing boards, mining licenses are being issued and exploratory missions are taking place. What for? The minerals and metals contained in seamounts, hydrothermal vents, and the polymetallic nodules littering the seabed, which take millions of years to form. As with fishing, “the slow pace of the deep is out of step with the timescale of impatient human demands” (p. 205). Here too, the position of the body that oversees protection of the seabed, the International Seabed Authority, is incredibly compromised. Next to issuing mining permits they unbelievably have already assigned areas to be exploited by their own mining company!

“To think that [deep-sea mining] will result in anything but the rapacious plundering of ecosystems we have seen on land seems highly unlikely in her eyes. Meanwhile, the mining PR-machine is already running at full tilt […]”

Scales’s focus on deep-sea mining is urgently needed. Scientists have been sounding alarm bells in the peer-reviewed literature regarding its impact, but this topic is still mostly hidden from the public at large. Her descriptions of the destructive practices and the size of the machines involved are chilling. To think that this will result in anything but the rapacious plundering of ecosystems we have seen on land seems highly unlikely in her eyes. Meanwhile, the mining PR-machine is already running at full tilt, and Scales deftly disarms their arguments as to why deep-sea mining is necessary. She agrees that the shift to renewable energy requires infrastructure that needs tremendous amounts of diverse metals. However, as a detour into the design of wind turbines shows, predicting which ones will be needed is difficult. And whether the seabed is the best place to get them is highly questionable.

Scales tackles many of the same topics that Alex Rogers covered in . Her tone is more strident but no less knowledgeable and, as opposed to The Deep, her book does include endnotes with references. I recommend them both highly. Meanwhile, her call “to declare the entire realm off limits [to] extraction of any kind” (p. 286) meshes seamlessly with Deborah Rowan Wright’s bold vision laid out in Future Sea.

Whether you enjoyed her previous books or are new to her brand of writing about marine biology, I urge you to read this book. Next to an unforgettable trip, she provides a rousing rallying cry for the preservation of the deep sea. The Brilliant Abyss is, true to its title, brilliant.

Disclosure: The publisher provided a review copy of this book. The opinion expressed here is my own, however.

The Brilliant Abyss

Other recommended books mentioned in this review:

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Say fossils and what comes to mind are the big, the bad, and the sexy: dinosaurs, pterosaurs, marine reptiles—in short, macrofossils. But perhaps more important and certainly more numerous are the microfossils. Fossils so small that you need a microscope to see them. In this richly illustrated book, French geologist and micropalaeontologist Patrick De Wever offers bite-sized insights into a discipline that rarely gets mainstream attention but undergirds many human endeavours.

Marvelous Microfossils: Creators, Timekeepers, Architects, written by Patrick De Wever, published by Johns Hopkins University Press in April 2020 (hardback, 256 pages)

Marvelous Microfossils immediately reminded me of Christian Sardet’s Plankton published by the University of Chicago Press in 2015. Both are large-format illustrated books on a mostly invisible world, originally published in French, that were picked up by American university presses. De Wever’s book was first published in 2016 by Biotope Éditions as Merveilleux Microfossiles and has now been published in English by Johns Hopkins University Press.

The book follows a straightforward structure. Four thematic sections each consist of short, one-page vignettes on a certain topic with illustrations and photos on the facing page. A first section introduces the various microscopic techniques used to study microfossils, as well as their living counterpart, plankton. One vignette covers the birth of oceanography, notably the 1872–1876 H.M.S. Challenger Expedition, another later deep-sea drilling projects such as Glomar Challenger and JOIDES Resolution.

A second section touches on the deep history of life and our planet as told through microfossils. Some of the oldest fossils, at 3.5 billion years old, were formed by thin films of photosynthetic cyanobacteria that trapped sediment and, layer by layer, slowly formed rocky accretions known as stromatolites. Other important chapters are the Great Oxygenation Event some 2.3 billion years ago when atmospheric oxygen levels rose dramatically, in the process rusting the planet’s iron reserves and forming the banded iron formations that we mine to this day. Another side-effect was the Huronian glaciation which turned our planet into a “Snowball Earth”. There was the formation of the ozone layer which allowed life to flourish closer to and ultimately on the surface, the contribution of plankton to fossil fuel reserves, and so forth.

“Who [are] these microfossils [?] […] Mostly, they are members of the plankton community; the often translucent, near-invisible microorganisms that drift on ocean […] currents”

All of these subjects are deeply fascinating, and some have been the subject of excellent popular academic books. I cannot help but feel that De Wever’s vignettes are so brief as to barely scratch the surface. That said, where this approach comes into its own is the third part of the book where he surveys the diversity of microfossils. By now you may well be wondering who these microfossils are, what organisms they consist of. I would have started the book with this section. Mostly, they are members of the plankton community; the often translucent, near-invisible microorganisms that drift on ocean and freshwater currents. This encompasses phytoplankton capable of photosynthesis such as cyanobacteria, diatoms, dinoflagellates, and coccolithophores. But also numerous small animals: copepods and ostracods (tiny crustaceans), pteropods (tiny molluscs), sponges, foraminifera (amoeboid protists dressed in filigree skeletons known as tests), the very spiny radiolarians, more mysterious groups such as acritarchs and conodonts, and many others. Their dead bodies continuously rain down in the water column, with time forming sediments and rocks all of their own.

The diversity of these groups is wild and the variation in shape and morphology defies the imagination. Seeing is believing, however, and the book includes a large number of photos and illustrations to help with that. Next to numerous (electron) microscope photos, De Wever draws heavily on the many drawings of the famed 19th-century German zoologist Ernst Haeckel, with over a third of the illustrations here from his oeuvre. Next to an influential biologist, he was also a skilled artist. Books such as Kunstformen der Natur and his illustrations for the reports of the Challenger expedition marry art and science.

Haeckel makes a return in the book’s last part, which looks at how microfossils, buoyed by Haeckel’s fame, influenced 19th century (French) art and architecture, notably Art Nouveau. There are also glimpses, all too brief, of other fascinating artists who painstakingly arrange microfossils under the microscope into geometrically mesmerising microtableaux (seen on the cover) or carve delicate scaled-up wooden versions of marine plankton.

“Patrick De Wever offers bite-sized insights into a discipline that rarely gets mainstream attention but undergirds many human endeavours.”

Last but not least, microfossils are economically incredibly important. As they are so numerous and their morphology evolves quickly, they make good markers for biostratigraphy, i.e. for determining the age of rock layers based on their fossil contents. The latter is vital when searching for petroleum and minerals, or for large engineering projects where you need to know on what rock layers you are constructing heavy infrastructure and buildings. Due to their ubiquity, foraminifera and diatoms are particularly useful groups.

There are very few popular books on micropalaeontology. Beyond the rare introductory textbook or welcome introductory guide to, say, diatoms, you will quickly find yourself confronted with journal articles and technical monographs, e.g. the long-running monograph series Bibliotheca Diatomologica from the German publisher Schweizerbart, and the Iconographia Diatomologica and Diatom Monograph series from Koeltz Scientific Books.

In conclusion, Marvelous Microfossils is worth it for the illustrations alone and is readily accessible to readers with little to no background in geology, palaeontology, or marine biology. Although I would have liked more substance than the short vignettes De Wever provides, I cannot deny that he here unlocks for a general audience an academic discipline that is normally largely ignored outside of the professional community.

Disclosure: The publisher provided a review copy of this book. The opinion expressed here is my own, however.

Marvelous Microfossils

Other recommended books mentioned in this review:

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