Get Free Ebook Sudden Origins: Fossils, Genes, and the Emergence of Species, by Jeffrey H. Schwartz
The means to obtain this book Sudden Origins: Fossils, Genes, And The Emergence Of Species, By Jeffrey H. Schwartz is very easy. You could not go for some areas and also invest the moment to only find the book Sudden Origins: Fossils, Genes, And The Emergence Of Species, By Jeffrey H. Schwartz As a matter of fact, you might not consistently get guide as you agree. However here, only by search and discover Sudden Origins: Fossils, Genes, And The Emergence Of Species, By Jeffrey H. Schwartz, you can obtain the lists of the books that you truly anticipate. Occasionally, there are many publications that are showed. Those books certainly will certainly surprise you as this Sudden Origins: Fossils, Genes, And The Emergence Of Species, By Jeffrey H. Schwartz collection.
Sudden Origins: Fossils, Genes, and the Emergence of Species, by Jeffrey H. Schwartz
Get Free Ebook Sudden Origins: Fossils, Genes, and the Emergence of Species, by Jeffrey H. Schwartz
Spend your time even for only couple of minutes to read a book Sudden Origins: Fossils, Genes, And The Emergence Of Species, By Jeffrey H. Schwartz Checking out an e-book will never decrease as well as lose your time to be ineffective. Reading, for some people end up being a requirement that is to do everyday such as hanging out for consuming. Now, just what concerning you? Do you prefer to read a book? Now, we will show you a brand-new e-book qualified Sudden Origins: Fossils, Genes, And The Emergence Of Species, By Jeffrey H. Schwartz that can be a brand-new method to explore the expertise. When reviewing this e-book, you can obtain one point to always keep in mind in every reading time, even detailed.
However below, we will reveal you incredible thing to be able consistently read guide Sudden Origins: Fossils, Genes, And The Emergence Of Species, By Jeffrey H. Schwartz anywhere and also whenever you occur as well as time. The book Sudden Origins: Fossils, Genes, And The Emergence Of Species, By Jeffrey H. Schwartz by simply can help you to recognize having guide to check out every single time. It won't obligate you to consistently bring the thick publication anywhere you go. You can merely keep them on the kitchen appliance or on soft file in your computer system to always read the space during that time.
Yeah, hanging out to review the publication Sudden Origins: Fossils, Genes, And The Emergence Of Species, By Jeffrey H. Schwartz by online can additionally offer you positive session. It will certainly relieve to communicate in whatever condition. Through this could be much more appealing to do as well as simpler to check out. Now, to obtain this Sudden Origins: Fossils, Genes, And The Emergence Of Species, By Jeffrey H. Schwartz, you could download in the web link that we supply. It will help you to obtain easy means to download guide Sudden Origins: Fossils, Genes, And The Emergence Of Species, By Jeffrey H. Schwartz.
The e-books Sudden Origins: Fossils, Genes, And The Emergence Of Species, By Jeffrey H. Schwartz, from straightforward to complex one will be an extremely helpful jobs that you can require to transform your life. It will not provide you negative statement unless you do not get the meaning. This is undoubtedly to do in reviewing a publication to overcome the significance. Generally, this publication entitled Sudden Origins: Fossils, Genes, And The Emergence Of Species, By Jeffrey H. Schwartz is checked out since you truly like this kind of book. So, you could get less complicated to recognize the perception and also definition. When even more to constantly keep in mind is by reading this book Sudden Origins: Fossils, Genes, And The Emergence Of Species, By Jeffrey H. Schwartz, you could fulfil hat your curiosity start by finishing this reading book.
"Fascinating."-Nature
Finally a compelling answer to the question that has plagued scientists for centuries . . .
"A detailed and informative historical account."-Nature
"This is an intriguing and significant work."-Library Journal
"A provocative new theory to explain how species arise."-Scientific American
"A worthwhile attempt at bridging the new developments in how species may change and the evidence for the patterns of those changes."-American Scientist
Darwin may have argued that new species emerge through a slow, gradual accumulation of tiny mutations, but the fossil record reveals a very different scenario-the sudden emergence of whole new species, with no apparent immediate ancestors.
In this provocative and timely book, Jeffrey Schwartz presents a groundbreaking and radical new theory that explains exactly how evolution works. Turning to the marvels of genetics, paleontology, embryology, and anatomy, and introducing the recent discovery of an extraordinary type of gene, known as homeobox genes, Schwartz provides an evocative answer to the long-standing question: How do species emerge?
Writing with the expert knowledge only an insider can bring, Schwartz tells the intriguing history of the study of evolution, from the initial breakthrough discoveries to the famous Piltdown controversy up through the genetics revolution. Sudden Origins is a monumental book that ties together all the threads of evolutionary theory while providing a compelling answer to one of life's most enduring conundrums. This book is crucial reading for anyone who has ever pondered the mysteries of our evolutionary heritage.
- Sales Rank: #1189740 in Books
- Published on: 1999-03-25
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 9.61" h x 1.35" w x 6.34" l, .0 pounds
- Binding: Hardcover
- 432 pages
Amazon.com Review
Despite the title, Darwin's Origin of Species doesn't really explain how new species are born. Scientists have been struggling with that thorny problem ever since its publication, and the recent revolution in molecular biology has turned up great piles of new evidence. Anthropologist Jeffrey H. Schwartz takes a close look at this evidence, as well as the more traditional paleontological material, in Sudden Origins: Fossils, Genes, and the Emergence of Species. He claims that the tide is turning in favor of "punctuated equilibrium"--the theory that species typically remain static for great lengths of time and then experience brief spurts of accelerated change--thanks in no small part to the discovery of homeobox genes.
These remarkable structures are the genetic equivalent of the proverbial butterfly wings that cause hurricanes halfway around the world--small changes can produce enormous effects. Homeobox genes regulate development and are remarkable similar between species and even between phyla--you share some with fruit flies, for example. By turning our attention toward embryology and development, Schwartz shows us that fossils can't tell the whole story, since much of it lies within the womb. He covers a lot of ground and stretches the reader's intellectual muscles; the scope of Sudden Origins and the greater understanding of Darwin's problem make the challenge well worth it. --Rob Lightner
From Publishers Weekly
Anthropology professor (Univ. of Pittsburgh) Schwartz's latest tome (after The Red Ape) is best viewed as a combination of three books that are only loosely tied together. The first blends changing ideas about human ancestors, a brief summary of their fossil evidence and a look at some of the dominant figures in archeology to provide a historical overview of human evolution. The second reviews theories about the origins of species while providing a somewhat idiosyncratic history of evolutionary biology from Charles Darwin to the present. The third, and briefest, offers Schwartz's ideas on how new species arise. Like many scientists before him, Schwartz argues that regulatory genes called homeobox genes, which were discovered in the 1980s, control developmental processes in such a way that small alterations to their structure can lead to major shifts in organisms, possibly even creating new species. Stressing the importance of an integrated approach to the study of evolution, Schwartz contends that "there is a very real need to return the study of comparative morphology, and especially development, to the fore of evolutionary biology." Perhaps. But his dense book is neither sufficiently innovative to gain the attention of most experts nor sufficiently eloquent to hold the interest of the general science reader.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
A nagging problem with Darwin's theory of evolution has been the issue of "missing links"Athe sudden appearance of new life forms significantly different from their ancestors, with no sign of intermediary forms in the fossil record. Schwartz (anthropology, Univ. of Pittsburgh) proposes an explanation of how this could occur based on recent research in genetics and developmental biology. Crucial to his explanation is the role of homeobox or "hox" genes, which control the rate and duration of growth of an organism and its parts and greatly affect its adult form. As background to his own synthesis of how evolution works, Schwartz also provides a detailed discussion of the theories of significant figures in the history of evolutionary thought. This is a scholarly, intriguing, and significant work, well documented with notes, although they lack the convenience of numbering. Related titles in a somewhat more popular style include Peter J. Bowler's Life's Splendid Drama (LJ 11/15/96), a history of evolutionary thought through 1940, and Kenneth J. McNamara's Shapes of Time (LJ 10/1/97), an explanation of new evolutionary ideas based on the rates and timing of an organism's development. Academic and large public libraries should have Schwartz's book.AMarit MacArthur, Univ. of Colorado, Denver
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Most helpful customer reviews
17 of 20 people found the following review helpful.
Important book, but too much history and not enough new data
By DR P. Dash
Schwartz spends most of his book on the history of evolutionary theory, which is fine from the perspective of a historian of science, but then there isn't much of the book left for development of newer ideas. Pages are spent on Linnaeus but next to nothing on cladisitics; much detailed attention is given to detailed reports of the first hominid fossils found, even to Piltdown, but more recent findings are hardly mentioned, surprising given that he is even now editing an authorative volume with Tattersall on hominid fossils. However, credit is due for developing the thesis that the discontinuous fossil record is due to the relatively sudden emergence of species from changes in regulatory molecules such as the homeobox genes. Rudolph Raff, in The Shape of Life (an excellent book which Schwartz quotes) previously developed the thesis that macroevolution of body plans was dependent on these genes, but did not emphasize the discontinuous fossil record. Although we don't get to a discussion of the new ideas until the last 10% of the book, nonetheless, this whole area of evolutionary developmental genetics is of such fundamental importance that the book is worth reading. In the relatively near future, with new fields such as comparative genomics (comparing entire DNA sequences of one organism to another), and computerized analysis of developmental expression of complete sets of cellular proteins analyzed on biochips, the promise of reconstructing, at a molecular level, the evolutionary history of life on earth has begun. I'd also like to take issue with the reviewer who thought Schwartz "savaged" Darwin. He does not, though as part of his detailed review of the early debates on evolution he quotes scientists who do attack Darwin's ideas. And although it's true that actual research details on speciation and changes in homeobox genes are at an early stage, and that Schwartz is not a researcher himself in this area, again I think he's on the right track. For example, see the article by Ting et al. (Science 1998 282:1501)about a rapidly changing homeobox gene linked to speciation in Drosophila. Overall, I think the book is an important one, but could have been much improved as a scientific text by giving a broader picture of newer data and less emphasis on historical personalities, though as written it is designed to appeal more to an educated lay audience than to the professional.
17 of 20 people found the following review helpful.
Full of Factual errors. Theories based on poor background.
By A Customer
Despite the intellectual pretensions of this book, Sudden Origins is poorly reasoned and is based on a naive understanding of much of the science on which it is based. It is filled with irritating errors. Most organisms stop growing when they reach sexual maturity, but many do not. Chert and flint are not volcanic rocks. The fossil record cited by Schwartz is limited almost exclusively to hominid specimens. While this might be expected from a paleoanthropologist, it is rather limiting for someone discussing the evolution of species. Schwartz's understanding of genetics seems to be limited to the high-school version of dominant and recessive traits, a brilliant deduction for Mendel, but a gross oversimplification as we approach the 21st century. The importance of mutations in the genes regulating development, such as the homeobox genes, is an interesting subject of current research, but the effects are far more varied and complex than Schwartz indicates. Such mutations can sometimes cause major developmental changes, but this does not imply that gaps in the fossil record are explained by this type of mutation. Given his own lack of sophistication in modern genetic, developmental, and evolutionary work, Schwartz's savaging of Darwin is in particularly poor taste. Darwin developed the idea of natural selection in spite of having limited understanding of the underlying mechanisms of change. This makes his achievement more intellectually impressive, not less. Darwin mastered the scientific knowledge of his time and built uppon it. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said of Schwartz.
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful.
The history of evolutionary thinking
By Bertrand Ducharme
Contrary to what is being advertised, it is not mainly a book about a new theory of evolution. It is above all a book about the history of evolutionnary thinking, endlessly recounting its major events and disputes. Don't expect any more a synthetic introduction to what is known on homeobox genes, though the book jacket says it is central to the new theory.
See all 20 customer reviews...
Sudden Origins: Fossils, Genes, and the Emergence of Species, by Jeffrey H. Schwartz PDF
Sudden Origins: Fossils, Genes, and the Emergence of Species, by Jeffrey H. Schwartz EPub
Sudden Origins: Fossils, Genes, and the Emergence of Species, by Jeffrey H. Schwartz Doc
Sudden Origins: Fossils, Genes, and the Emergence of Species, by Jeffrey H. Schwartz iBooks
Sudden Origins: Fossils, Genes, and the Emergence of Species, by Jeffrey H. Schwartz rtf
Sudden Origins: Fossils, Genes, and the Emergence of Species, by Jeffrey H. Schwartz Mobipocket
Sudden Origins: Fossils, Genes, and the Emergence of Species, by Jeffrey H. Schwartz Kindle
Sudden Origins: Fossils, Genes, and the Emergence of Species, by Jeffrey H. Schwartz PDF
Sudden Origins: Fossils, Genes, and the Emergence of Species, by Jeffrey H. Schwartz PDF
Sudden Origins: Fossils, Genes, and the Emergence of Species, by Jeffrey H. Schwartz PDF
Sudden Origins: Fossils, Genes, and the Emergence of Species, by Jeffrey H. Schwartz PDF
