The Crucible of Creation: The Burgess Shale and the Rise of Animals

The Burgess Shale deposits, in western Canada, have joined the Galapagos Islands as a destination of choice for vacationing scientists and fans of evolutionary theory. The fame of these places is in part due to the unique flora and fauna (living or dead) they boast, and in part to the scientists who have described and attempted to explain them. Like Stephen J. Gould's Wonderful Life, this book from Simon Conway Morris, original describer of the fascinating, troubling fossil Hallucigenia, gives an account of the Burgess Shale and the scientists who argue over the tiny remains of once-living creatures. Conway Morris calls the place "the most wonderful fossil deposit in the world," and his emotion is contagious. Beyond describing the creatures that formed the fossils, he speculates about how the Burgess Shale fits in to the story of human evolution.

• The Fossils of the Burgess Shale
• Wonderful Life: The Burgess Shale and the Nature of History
• Wonderful Life: The Burgess Shale and the Nature of History
• The Cambrian Explosion: The Construction of Animal Biodiversity
• The Deep Structure of Biology: Is Convergence Sufficiently Ubiquitous to Give a Directional Signal?
• A Sea without Fish: Life in the Ordovician Sea of the Cincinnati Region (Life of the Past)
• The Runes of Evolution: How the Universe became Self-Aware
• Life's Solution: Inevitable Humans in a Lonely Universe
• The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs: A New History of a Lost World
• Cambrian Ocean World: Ancient Sea Life of North America (Life of the Past)