If you asked ten scientists what made them choose their profession, would you get ten different answers? My instinct tells me that curiosity is an overriding factor for many. It certainly was for palaeontologist Richard Fortey. Published just days after his 75th birthday, A Curious Boy reflects on his earliest years and was such a disarming and enjoyable memoir that I finished it in a single day.
A Curious Boy: The Making of a Scientist, written by Richard Fortey, published by William Collins (a HarperCollins imprint) in February 2021 (hardback, 338 pages)
Many people reading this might already know who Fortey is and can skip this brief introduction. Born in 1946, Richard Alan Fortey retired from the London Natural History Museum in 2006 after a lifelong career as a palaeontologist specialising in trilobites. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society and the Royal Society of Literature and was elected President of the Geological Society of London in 2007. He has written eight previous books and has presented television programmes on the BBC and other channels, racking up various prizes and medals along the way for his science communication. His curiosity has propelled him far.
Fortey the boy was possessed by an insatiable curiosity that encompassed almost everything: natural history, chemistry, geology, botany, mycology, palaeontology, biology, art, poetry, music, literature… his was “a sponge-like mind in a world pregnant with possibilities and discoveries” (p. 33). He refused to recognise the division between art and science, and throughout his early years, “a growing cultural life ran in parallel with my natural-history enthusiasms” (p. 160). A not-so-subtle nudge by his grammar school headmaster send him down the path scientific, but it was not until he was headed for Cambridge University to read natural sciences that he decided that this “should be an end to the intellectual blunderbuss. Time to buckle down and find a single target” (p. 226).
More than once, his curiosity became a reprieve from life’s cruel twists and turns. Without wanting to spoil it, there are two particularly painful episodes delivered here with such raw intensity that they will leave the reader stunned. His study and work became all-absorbing and bore him through these tragedies. There is also a more subtle motif of loss running through this memoir. Innocence is lost when several revelations force him to see his father in a new light. Recollections of the natural world lay bare the loss of once common birds, plants, and mammals. An old botanical field guide becomes “a record of how the environment has changed during my lifetime” (p. 200–201). Like many others, Fortey, too, has noticed today’s clean windscreens after a drive through the countryside, a portent of the insidious loss of insects. “Sometimes, a longer memory is a recipe for gloom” (p. 11).
“There is also a more subtle motif of loss running through this memoir. […] “Sometimes, a longer memory is a recipe for gloom”“
Curiosity serves as a source of embarrassment and guilt, if only in hindsight. He reflects with some remorse on typical boyhood activities of the time, collecting birds eggs and killing butterflies to pin them in collections. Others verge more on guilty pleasures and pranks. An early fascination with chemistry drives him to synthesize and deploy ethyl isocyanide stink bombs, the “Mount Everest of the malodorous” (p. 85). A particularly disarming quality of this memoir is its unabashed honesty. Fortey observes this unusual child gorging himself on the arts and sciences, and wonders: “If I could meet my teenage intellectual apogee now I don’t know whether I would admire him or feel sorry for him” (p. 180). He then deflates himself further when a chance encounter with the polymath George Steiner made him realise that “I was as short of true omniscience in the same proportion as I fell short as a poet” (p. 181).
In that sense, I felt the book’s title hid a double entendre. He remarks that his mother must have thought him a curious boy for being the only child to roam the Geological Museum in London while his peers were playing football on Saturdays. Did she mean to suggest that he was possessed of a certain queerness, in the original sense of the word? In that light, the book’s cover strikes me as one of the most appropriate I have seen in a long time: a horn of plenty overflowing with the subjects of his interest, drawn in a style that reminded me of Terry Gilliam’s absurd animations for Monty Python.
But Fortey’s curiosity also fuels defiance. For all the guilt over his childhood collections, he doubts that such activities have been the driving force in the population declines of animals and plants. Rather, collections are important as they “[…] are archives of what was there, regardless of moral judgements about the way the specimens were collected” (p. 44) and “claims without documentary support about how things used to be might well be treated with suspicion by the next generation” (p. 207). Similarly, taxonomy matters to him. Without names, “humans wander blindly in an unstructured wilderness” (p. 29), while “to fail to recognise species is like being unaware of words that are essential to cogent speech” (p. 210). These are sentiments that have been expressed by other authors and resonate deeply with me.
“Fortey mentions that […] he “acquired an armoury of words that served his older version well” […] There is depth and beauty to his writing and its cadence is bewitching”
Those interested in the science are served as well. There are some interludes here about graptolites, colonial plankton that does not really resemble anything alive today. Initially he collects their fossils at Abereiddy Bay in Wales as a boy, while a later discovery described here proofs worthy of publication before he has even written up anything about trilobites. The first trilobite collections he makes in Svalbard suggest three distinct communities, corresponding to an onshore-to-offshore depth gradient. When similar communities are retrieved in Nevada, this aligns perfectly with the then-novel theory of plate tectonics. The start of Fortey’s career coincided with this idea finally finding wider acceptance in the geological community.
Given that he has written about his work on trilobites elsewhere, they remain bit players in this book. A Curious Boy only tells the start of their story, ending with Fortey attending his first major geology conference in 1972. Some of his personal and professional adventures later in life, working at the London Natural History Museum, have been told in Dry Store Room No. 1. However, my feeling is that there is enough material for a second memoir, not unlike Dawkins did with his recent double act An Appetite for Wonder and Brief Candle in the Dark. I would happily make time to hear more of Fortey’s remarkable life story.
At some point, Fortey mentions that one perk of his eclectic teenage interests is that he “acquired an armoury of words that served his older version well” (p. 180), as I hope the various quotes above have revealed. There is depth and beauty to his writing and its cadence is bewitching; I read A Curious Boy in a single day. This was, shamefully, my introduction to Fortey, and I enjoyed it so much that I immediately went ahead and bought five of his previous books after finishing it.
Disclosure: The publisher provided a review copy of this book. The opinion expressed here is my own, however.
Other recommended books mentioned in this review:
__________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________
Planet Earth might just as well be called Planet Water. Not only is our planet mostly ocean, life also started out here. Following his 2011 book Convergent Evolution, palaeobiologist George R. McGhee returns to MIT Press and The Vienna Series in Theoretical Biology to expand his examination to oceanic lifeforms, with the tantalising promise of applying the insights gained to astrobiology. I was particularly stoked for this second of a three-part dive into what I consider one of evolutionary biology’s most exciting topics.
Convergent Evolution on Earth: Lessons for the Search for Extraterrestrial Life, written by George R McGhee, Jr., published by MIT Press in November 2019 (hardback, 317 pages)
Just to get you up to speed, convergent evolution refers to the ubiquitous pattern of evolution repeatedly hitting on the same or similar solutions to a problem in different organisms. McGhee’s coverage of this topic in his 2011 book was wide. Next to morphologies and behaviours in terrestrial animals, he examined convergent evolution in ecosystems and molecules such as DNA and protein. He also introduced the abstract concepts of theoretical morphology and the hyperdimensional morphospace where life is probing all possible and allowed options.
Convergent Evolution on Earth can be thought of as an extension of his previous work. There is no repetition of these concepts and the coverage across different levels of organisation is absent. McGhee assumes familiarity with this and readers would do well to read the two books in sequence. If you do, the approach here will feel familiar, as most chapters again revolve around lists with examples. What is new is that McGhee broadens his examination of convergent evolution to behaviours and morphologies in marine organisms.
“[…] the question “who is convergent on who?” is much more relevant [here, as] it is the land plants who convergently evolved similar forms to much older marine animals”
I will come right out and say that I found this book a more challenging read. The terrestrial species examined in his last book will be familiar to most, but this book deals with marine vertebrates and, mostly, invertebrates. There are numerous groups here that even biologists will not necessarily be familiar with, also because many extinct groups are discussed. Thus, the convergent evolution of chemosynthesis found in deepwater species far away from light covers ciliophorans, polychaete and oligochaete worms, and a wide array of living and extinct mollusc groups. The convergent evolution of different morphologies to deal with living on soft and unstable substrates covers sponges, corals, extinct bivalves such as bakeveliids, and all sorts of echinoderms. More familiar groups such as fish and cephalopods feature when discussing adaptations to moving and living in the water column (McGhee’s mention of the repeated re-evolution of the whole spectrum of ammonoid shell forms following mass extinctions made me smile, as it reminded me of Danna Staaf’s discussion of this phenomenon in her excellent Monarchs of the Sea). And the convergent evolution of fundamental organ systems (e.g. nerves, muscles, or immune systems) reaches all the way back in time to some of the earliest invertebrate groups such as ctenophores, cnidarians, and bilaterians.
Of course, our land-dwelling, backboned vantage point makes us biased—for the longest time these invertebrate forms dominated life on Earth, and they are still instrumental to our ecosystems. Even so, most of us will not know what they look like, and this where the lack of images is much more noticeable than in McGhee’s previous book. The recent The Invertebrate Tree of Life is a good reference work to have at hand, not just for the imagery, but also for the taxonomical content. Though it was published just after Convergent Evolution on Earth and McGhee will not have had access to it, the taxonomy he has adopted closely mirrors that of Giribet & Edgecombe, with some exceptions deep in the tree of life that are known areas of contention.
“[…] what of the promised lessons for astrobiology? […] I felt a bit let down by the subtitle—it promised more than the final […] chapter to which this discussion is now limited.”
Next to showing the very deep roots and fundamental nature of convergent evolution, the question “who is convergent on who?” is much more relevant and appropriate this time around. Though we have named many sea creatures after land plants (e.g. sea lilies and moss animals), this book makes clear that, to solve the same fundamental problems, it is the land plants who convergently evolved similar forms to the much older marine animals. A notable advance is the adoption of new, recently proposed terminology, distinguishing between iso-convergence, allo-convergence, and retro-convergence. These terms respectively describe whether convergent traits evolved from the same or different precursor traits, or are a case of re-evolution of ancestral traits.
But what of the promised lessons for astrobiology? There is a look at Mars’s geological history, the possibility of life on water worlds in our Solar System such as the moons Europa, Enceladus, and Titan, and there is the conclusion that biological signatures are likely found on water worlds and technological signatures on water worlds with landmasses (readers interested in this will want to check out the massive Life in the Cosmos). Although what McGhee covers here is interesting, I admit that I felt a bit let down by the subtitle—it promised more than the final, 25-page chapter to which this discussion is now limited. My feeling is that most general readers will be better served by Kershenbaum’s The Zoologist’s Guide to the Galaxy. For those wanting to get to grips with this topic more in-depth, I end this three-part series with my review of Contingency and Convergence which revisits the question of their relative importance and applies this to astrobiology in a thought-provoking manner.
Convergent Evolution on Earth is not for the faint of heart. For evolutionary biologists, this is an interesting add-on to McGhee’s previous book, though requiring a certain level of background knowledge. For many other readers, there is probably less astrobiology in here than they would like.
Disclosure: The publisher provided a review copy of this book. The opinion expressed here is my own, however.
Other recommended books mentioned in this review:
__________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________
]]>
When it comes to modern palaeoartists, Mark Witton has become a leading light in my opinion. Next to bringing a background as a professional palaeontologist to his artwork, he also wrote The Palaeoartist’s Handbook, which is a unique resource for this field as far as I can tell. Who could be better suited to produce a homage and sequel to one of the most iconic palaeoart books of all times: Knight’s Life through the Ages?
Life through the Ages II: Twenty-First Century Visions of Prehistory, written by Mark P. Witton, published by Indiana University Press in April 2020 (hardback, 157 pages)
In the pantheon of palaeoart few names loom as large as that of American artist Charles R. Knight (1874-1953). Of the several books he wrote, his 1946 Life Through the Ages is the one that stood the test of time, having been reprinted on multiple occasions. In Life through the Ages II, Witton provides a gorgeously illustrated tour of life on Earth, reflecting how the state of science has advanced in the intervening seven decades.
In his introduction, which is both a celebration and overview of Knight’s career and artwork, Witton encourages readers to seek out Knight’s book and have them side by side to see first-hand how palaeoart has changed. I am unfortunately not so lucky to have that book at hand, but Witton provides some helpful pointers. Where Knight’s book contained thirty-three images, mostly charcoal sketches and a few colour illustrations, Witton presents sixty-two pieces, all in glorious full-colour. The format is the same, however, with short descriptive texts and images on facing pages.
Before you embark on this chronological tour through the history of life there is a very brief introduction to the geologic timescale, the biological classification of lifeforms, and the reconstruction of extinct animals in art, which recaps some of the main points of The Palaeoartist’s Handbook. An appendix contains brief notes with sources and justifications or caveats for each illustration. The only thing I felt was missing was an introduction to Witton’s method of making art. An interview with him in Dinosaur Art II revealed that he primarily works digitally, although to my eyes his works might just as well have been painted on canvas.
“The notes in the appendix reveal a careful artist who holds himself to exacting standards of authenticity […] no posture, no limb placement, no choice of bodily proportions has gone without serious research and thought.”
In that same portfolio, Witton encouraged novice palaeoartists to explore animal groups that others have shunned. This ethos underlies Life through the Ages II, as Witton presents a very representative and balanced whistle-stop tour of some major highlights in life’s evolution. Whether it is the birth of Earth, hydrothermal vents as the cradle of life, or the first cyanobacteria building dome-like structures called stromatolites, Witton shows you can make dramatic artwork out of static subjects. Before we get to the tetrapods, there is similarly attention for early invertebrates in the Ediacaran and Cambrian periods, the invasion of land by plants, and the rise of fishes.
Once life developed four limbs, Witton continues to aim for a taxonomic balance in his depictions. Thus there are temnospondyls (a precursor to amphibians), the bizarre whorl-toothed shark Helicoprion, synapsids other than Dimetrodon such as dicynodonts and the mammal-like cynodonts, and early reptiles in the form of erythrosuchids. We also get Witton’s speciality, pterosaurs, a beautiful depiction of the last land whales, and an aquatic sloth. Even when painting a staple subject such as Brontosaurus, his choice of setting, two males engaged in neck-to-neck combat in the pouring rain, is memorable.
Witton’s style is characterised by a subdued use of colours and tones that feel earthy and organic to me, making for atmospheric pictures. Some are downright eerie, such as a giant, floating crinoid barge or his near-Lovecraftian depiction of a giant ammonite. There is as much attention to the backdrop of skies, vegetation, or mountains, as there is for the subjects in the foreground. The notes in the appendix reveal a careful artist who holds himself to exacting standards of authenticity while acknowledging the sometimes limited state of our knowledge. So, he asks readers to be sceptical of his depiction of the Ediacaran biota and warns them that more complete, future remains of Plathyhystrix could render his depiction obsolete. No posture, no limb placement, no choice of bodily proportions has gone without serious research and thought.
“Witton exhorts students of palaeoart to study animal behaviour. Nature is not constantly red in tooth and claw. Although there are some spectacular pieces here […] there are plenty of tranquil tableaux.”
There are two other areas of Witton’s work where this realism shines through. He is not afraid of soft-tissue reconstruction, basing his depictions on careful study of skeletal modifications that hint at attachment points for muscles. Brontosaurus is depicted with a fleshy, muscular neck, the embrithopod Arsinoitherium with large horns covered in horn sheath, and the rhinocerotoid Paraceratherium with a tapir-like proboscis. Similarly, Witton exhorts students of palaeoart to study animal behaviour. Nature is not constantly red in tooth and claw. Although there are some spectacular pieces here (the giant shark Cretoryxhina breaching to catch a pterosaur, two hyena-like carnivores disembowelling a Miocene horse), there are plenty of tranquil tableaux. Arsinoitherium standing watch, the land whale Georgiacetus lounging on a rocky outcrop, the entelodont Daeodon resting after a meal, two rambunctious indricotheres mucking about, or a giant pangolin eyeing up an anthill. Even the ankylosaurid Zuul, destroyer of shins, is caught in a moment of quiet.
The text contains concise overviews of the periods and subjects depicted, highlighting where our thinking has advanced. Such as the more nuanced view that the Cambrian explosion was perhaps not an explosion after all, the idea that coelacanth should not really be called a living fossil anymore, or the increasingly blurred boundary of dinosaur–bird transition. What I particularly liked is that the homage to Knight is subtle. Sure, as Witton also tweeted, his depiction of Dimetrodon that graces the cover is a straight update of Knight’s piece, his giant Mesozoic sea lizards swimming at the surface is a tribute to a way of depiction that has fallen out of favour, and the group of sauropods in the background of the Mesozoic mammal painting are a straight throwback – and Knight’s name comes up several times in the appendix. But he is not constantly the subject of attention. Witton’s body of work stands firmly on its own two legs.
Life through the Ages II is a beautiful palaeoart portfolio that pushes the envelope where realistic compositions and reconstructions are concerned. These are images that would not look out of place framed on your wall. If you can buy just one palaeoart book this year, make it this one. It has me seriously considering purchasing a print or supporting Witton’s work through his Patreon page.
Disclosure: The publisher provided a review copy of this book. The opinion expressed here is my own, however.
Other recommended books mentioned in this review:
or 
or 
__________________________________________________________________
or 
__________________________________________________________________
, 
, __________________________________________________________________
]]>
or The deep past harbours many events, epochs, and places that are still a mystery to me. Case in point: once upon a time, North America was cut in half by an enormous ocean. Something I was only dimly aware of. Luckily, Indiana University Press’s flagship palaeontology series Life of the Past has just the book to remedy that. I may be three years late to the party, but this 2017 book provides all the details one could ask for, and then some.
Oceans of Kansas: A Natural History of the Western Interior Sea, written by Michael J. Everhart, published by Indiana University Press in July 2017 (hardback, 427 pages)
The title of this book is possibly why I initially overlooked it. The Western Interior Sea bisected North America from the Gulf of Mexico to the Arctic, covering far more than the state of Kansas. But since the author Michael J. Everhart (the Adjunct Curator of Paleontology at the Sternberg Museum of Natural History in Hays, Kansas) has spent his professional career in Kansas, and the pickings here are particularly good, Oceans of Kansas it is. It was one of many ancient oceans: bodies of water that no longer exist due to plate tectonics, changes in sea-level, or both (see my review of Earth History and Palaeogeography). Where, for instance, the Tethys Ocean closed over time, land uplift and retreating water left the Western Interior Sea high and dry but very much in place. This is why you can find fossils of ancient fish, turtles, and marine reptiles in what are now the Great Plains of North 
America.
The first two chapters introduce the location and the history of the discovery of this inland sea. Although the book takes regular excursions, the focus is squarely on the Cretaceous rock record in Kansas, spanning about 30 million years, and within that specifically on the Smoky Hill Chalk. This was deposited when microscopic shelled creatures lived and died over some 5 million years, blanketing the bottom of the Western Interior Sea with marine sediment that turned into chalk. It is this particular layer that offers a unique window into life between 87 to 82 million years ago.
“[…] land uplift and retreating water left the Western Interior Sea high and dry but very much in place. This is why you can find fossils of ancient fish, turtles, and marine reptiles in what are now the Great Plains of North America.”
The bulk of the book systematically details all the relevant taxonomic groups. It was a world where the sea bottom was blanketed with inoceramid clams while overhead the large marine fauna took centre stage. There were sharks in many sizes, including terrifyingly large Ginsu sharks (genus Cretoxyrhina) that left scratches and bite marks on, and sometimes even teeth embedded in, the bones of numerous other animals. But also unusual shell-crushing sharks (genus Ptychodus) with knobbly, dome-shaped teeth. There were numerous fish, including the enormous 5.5 m Xiphactinus, fanged fish (genus Enchodus), and Saurodontid fish with a sword-shaped lower jaw. Turtles shared the waters with a riot of other large marine reptiles: the plesiosaurs, divided into the long-necked elasmosaurids and the short-necked pliosaurids, and the massive mosasaurs, the top predators of this realm. Especially that last group is well portrayed here, providing a welcome update to the now fairly dated 1997 book Ancient Marine Reptiles and the 2005 book Sea Dragons. There is enough fossil material here for Everhart to include a well-informed natural history section, while the colour plates by the late Dan Varner provide some welcome eye candy.
For other groups, the information is scanter. Ammonites and related cephalopods must have populated these waters, but fossilised remains are few as their aragonite shells readily dissolved. There are the occasional remains of pteranodons, although these flying reptiles probably did not fly hundreds of miles to the middle of the Western Interior Sea to forage here. Everhart conjectures these were the victims during long-distance migrations. There were toothed seabirds of the genera Hesperornis and Ichthyornis, two branches of the bird family tree that are now extinct. And there are rare dinosaur remains. How they got there? The clue is in the title of a wonderful 2012 paper: Float, explode or sink: postmortem fate of lung-breathing marine vertebrates – these are the remains of carcasses washed out to sea.
“terrifyingly large Ginsu sharks […] left scratches and bite marks on, and sometimes even teeth embedded in, the bones of numerous other animals”
This brief natural history sketch is gleaned from fossils, and they are the focus of this book. Everhart provides museum accession numbers and exacting details on what animal parts were found when and where, who dug them up, who described them, and how taxonomic redescriptions means fossil specimens have sometimes been known by three or four different names since their discovery.
Take for example the mosasaur species currently known as Tylosaurus kansaensis. The type specimen (FHSM VP-2295) was originally collected in 1968 and identified as “Clidastes or Tylosaurus” when it was exhibited at the Sternberg Museum of Natural History in Kansas. Over the ensuing decades it was renamed Platecarpus, then T. nepaeolicus, then downgraded to the generic Tylosaurus n. sp. (short for new species). When the author and his colleagues examined the specimen in 1990, they agreed it was something else after all and named it T. kansaensis in 2005. This paper was criticised, claiming that T. kansaensis could not be separated from T. nepaeolicus and was a juvenile form of it. Everhart disagrees and that is where this particular matter rests for now. It makes me wonder: is there a central database to keep track of all these name changes?
Thus, Oceans of Kansas is not a very difficult or overtly technical book, but it is highly detailed. These kinds of minutiae are probably of limited interest to the general reader, but they are the hard currency of aspiring and practising palaeontologists. I always like to clarify that this remark is not intended as a criticism but as an observation of the level a book is pitched at – good to know going in. That said, it is not a dry read and Everhart livens it up by opening each chapter with a fictionalised account of “a day in the life of…”, and tells of curious historical incidents, backstories to remarkable fossils, and his personal experiences collecting in the field.
“Oceans of Kansas is […] highly detailed. These kinds of minutiae are probably of limited interest to the general reader, but they are the hard currency of aspiring and practising palaeontologists. “
Two things, in particular, emerged while reading Oceans of Kansas. First is a revealing look into the history of palaeontology. Not surprisingly, the infamous rivalry between O.C. Marsh and E.D. Cope features here. But others are equally important to the story of the Western Interior Sea: Joseph Leidy, Benjamin F. Mudge, Samuel W. Williston, and the Sternberg family. One thing that bedevils research to this day is the lack of stratigraphical data for older specimens, something that was not considered particularly important at the time! It was not until 1982 that E.D. Hattin produced an accurate chronostratigraphy based on numerous thin layers of residual volcanic ash deposits found in the Smoky Hill Chalk. This has allowed more precise dating of fossils.
Second is what this book reveals about palaeontology as a discipline. I already mentioned the confusing tangle of taxonomic name changes. Then there is the large amount of undescribed material lingering in museum collections. Everhart repeatedly writes, rather casually, how specimens collected sometimes a century ago are only now studied and described (I called this the dirty secret of natural history museums in my review of The Lost Species). The book also made me appreciate again just how fragmentary and haphazard the material is with which palaeontologists work. Much of the seafloor of the Western Interior Sea was exposed to erosion millions of years ago already, and thus no longer exists. So much information has been lost to time that it is a miracle that Everhart and his many colleagues have been able to reveal this much through their diligent work.
“The book made me appreciate again just how fragmentary and haphazard the material is with which palaeontologists work. […] it is a miracle that Everhart and his many colleagues have been able to reveal this much.”
Two final observations. The first thing you will notice when picking up this book is its sheer weight: the large trim size and thick paper stock make this book a lot heavier than you would expect for 400 pages. But this has been put to good use as the book is liberally illustrated with about 220 photos and drawings. Some weight could have been saved at the end of the book as references are given separately for each chapter, duplicating many of them. The second thing to note is that the first edition of Oceans of Kansas was published in 2005. I have not read it, but in the current preface, Everhart explains with some satisfaction how this second edition allowed him to finish what he started. Next to the obvious updates and new findings in the intervening twelve years, the first edition left out material that he wanted to include, but could not due to deadlines and publication schedules. This is a valuable update.
Like other site-specific books in the Life of the Past series (e.g. Mesozoic Sea Dragons, Dinosaurs of Darkness, and Jurassic West) Oceans of Kansas synthesizes a huge amount of information and is the definitive reference work to this time and place. It is thanks to scientists such as Everhart who dedicate their career to the exacting study of localised fossil-rich sites that we can a get glimpse into deep history.
Disclosure: The publisher provided a review copy of this book. The opinion expressed here is my own, however.
Other recommended books mentioned in this review:
or 
, 
or __________________________________________________________________
or 
or 
or __________________________________________________________________
or 
, __________________________________________________________________
]]>
or 
, 
or 
“Squid Empire: The Rise and Fall of the Cephalopods”, written by Danna Staaf, published by ForeEdge, a University Press of New England imprint, in December 2017 (hardback, 237 pages)
Cephalopods have a long and illustrious evolutionary history, stretching back some 500 million years. The fact that they are still here means they have lived through their fair share of mass extinctions. After some basic morphology, Staaf quickly introduces us to the three groups on the family tree, as these are the main protagonists whose fate we will follow here.
A large chunk of the book deals with the now-extinct group of Ammonoids whose familiar whorled fossil remains are so numerous that they can be used to date rock strata. Although many species went extinct at the end of the Devonian, Permian and Triassic, some members of the lineage managed to survive, allowing the group to thrive, again and again, all the way until the end-Cretaceous. With Brannen’s recent The Ends of the World still fresh on my mind I was quite familiar with the details, but if you’re not, Staaf does an excellent job in giving a balanced picture of the various mass extinctions. She is equally capable of giving a short history of the Alvarez impact hypothesis, as she is able to explain anoxic events or large igneous provinces and flood basalts.
The second group are the slow-and-steady (evolutionarily speaking) Nautiloids who seem never to have diversified terribly much, but have kept on keeping on to this day. And, finally, there are the Coleoids who radiated to become today’s cuttlefish, squid and octopuses.
“[…] ongoing academic discussions are combined with Staaf’s narrative which is fiendishly readable”
And yes, I said octopuses rather than octopi. Staaf provides the best overview I have read so far of the whimsical discussion around how to pluralise this word. But far from mere whimsy, this book provides page upon page of fascinating insights. Whether it’s the intricacies of evolving buoyancy mechanisms allowing cephalopods to float, the way Coleoids internalised and in some groups virtually eliminated their shell, the continued confusion around the lower jaw or aptychus of the Ammonoids, or the arms race between cephalopods and their predators (first fish, then whales)… who knew there was so much fascinating research buried in the scientific literature?
Being a marine biologist herself, she is well-situated in these academic circles and has interviewed many scientists including Christian Klug, Dieter Korn, Kenneth de Baets, and Isabelle Kruta, all of whom are editors on the 2nd edition of the Ammonoid bible Ammonoid Paleobiology. Interesting findings and insider insights into ongoing academic discussions are combined with Staaf’s narrative which is fiendishly readable. In my opinion, her writing style strikes just the right balance between informative and understatedly entertaining (I sniggered throughout the book), without feeling forcedly funny. Admittedly, I have a soft spot for these squishy invertebrates, but I tore through this book in the space of a single seven-hour sitting! Squid Empire is a shining example of good use of illustrations supporting the text, especially the cephalopod family tree on page 46 is something you’ll be referring to time and again and has some clever details. Next to that, the book is also beautifully designed with stylised chapter headings and a beautiful Haeckel lithograph gracing the cover.
Dinosaurs may have time and again stolen the limelight, but Staaf shows an accessible book on the evolutionary history of cephalopods has been long overdue. With Squid Empire – which, can you believe it, is only her first book – she has established herself as cephalopod-champion par excellence. I know that 2018 has only just started, but already this book will be a strong contender as my book-of-the-year. This, ladies and gentlemen, is how you write a good popular academic book.
Disclosure: The publisher provided a review copy of this book. The opinion expressed here is my own, however.
Other recommended books mentioned in this review:
or 
, 
, __________________________________________________________________
or 
, 
, __________________________________________________________________
]]>
