Cradle of life : the discovery of earth's earliest fossils /

The public is most familiar with paleontology through dinosaurs and human fossils, but most paleontologists study the remains of small boneless animals or single-celled organisms. These creatures mainly derive from rocks dated to only the most recent eighth of Earth's life span. The search for evidence of life in far older rocks is the subject of this popular work by one of its leading protagonists. This field combines research in biochemistry, zoology, botany, geology, and paleontology, all of which must be introduced to the nonspecialist reader. Moreover, the search for the most ancient life has been jumpy, with heroic innovators and grumpy naysayers. Schopf (Univ. of California, Los Angeles) is moderately successful in combining all of these topics and actors into a smoothly flowing narrative. He perhaps provides a bit too much detail, as is often true of scientists who popularize their own work, but Schopf also offers a number of insider "nuggets": the story of how he and his graduate adviser held up review of a colleague's paper until they could throw together a long-delayed manuscript on the same topic is almost as amazing as the fact that the colleague allowed them to publish first in the same journal! A good introduction to a quickly evolving topic. General readers; undergraduate and graduate students. E. Delson; CUNY Herbert H. Lehman College

Until the mid-1950s, biologists, geologists and paleontologists seeking early life's traces had to make do with fossils from the Phanerozoic periods, which represent only 15% of the time that life has existed on Earth. The first 85%Äthe Precambrian EraÄremained obscure. But since the discovery of "microfossils" in Canada's Gunflint rocks, "Precambrian studies have boomed": these fossil microbes constitute our direct evidence about primordial life. Schopf, a professor at UCLA's Institute of Geophysics, adopts an unusually informal first-person style for this rangy exploration of how Precambrian fossils came to light and what they've taught us. The author covers the history of evolutionary thought and the exploits of field paleontologists, as well as the trajectory of his own career. The casual prose brings both rewards and perils. Most readers will want to know, for example, that in 1924 Aleksandr Oparin explained how simple molecules with carbon, hydrogen, oxygen and nitrogen might have "given rise to the first cells." Few, however, will care that Schopf once lunched with Oparin ("It was thrilling!") or that a limestone slab Schopf found in China "is now embedded in the entry way at our home." What reader needs to be told that, "in science, technical terms are simply shorthand notations for ideas"? Subtract the self-referential elements and Schopf's book is a very clear introduction to the first living things. Final chapters tie these early organisms to the photosynthetic cyanobacteria on today's earth, digress into the history of paleontological frauds and explain what Schopf thinks is right and wrong in NASA's search for fossilized life on Mars. 80 b&w illustrations. (May) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

Schopf, the world's leading expert on Precambrian fossils (0.5 to 4.5 billion years old), has written an exceptional description of the field that is accessible to any educated lay reader. As a graduate student, he helped Harvard biologist Elso Barghoorn prepare the landmark Science article on the famous Canadian Gunflint chert, a seminal Precambrian discovery. His candid description of the competition over who would have the honor of publishing the first major paper is worth the price of the book. Schopf's chapter on the evolution of biochemical pathways is a fascinating and wonderfully clear exposition of a difficult topic. The chapter on fraud in paleontology seems oddly out of place, but descriptions of the meeting between Schopf, Aleksandr Oparin, and Salvador Dali and of Schopf's critical analysis of the Mars rock for indications of early life more than make up for this. Recommended for all libraries.ÄLloyd Davidson, Seeley G. Mudd Lib. for Science & Engineering, Northwestern Univ., Evanston, IL (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

One of the newest scientific specialties has as its subject the oldest living things: the unbelievably ancient fossils of the Pre-Cambrian period. Until very recently, the record of fossil life began with the Cambrian period, roughly 550 million years ago. But the fossils of that era were already complex, the remains of organisms far more advanced than the simple cells that scientists believed must have been the earliest living things. Were the more ancient forms too fragile to survive the fossilization process or had they simply gone unrecognized? As Darwin already recognized, the apparent absence of truly primitive forms in the fossil record might be counted an argument against evolution. One pioneer, J.T. Dawson of Canada, did use his claimed discovery of a ``dawn animal'' over 1.1 billion years old to raise questions about the missing links in the long stretch between it and the first Cambrian fossils. Dawson's claims were refuted, but other scientists took up the search. The strongest candidates were stromatolites, cabbage-like structures first identified in upstate New York in the 1870s. But their biological origin was controversial until the 1950s, when microscopic examination of fossil stromatolites, and the discovery of living stromatolites near Australia, clinched the case. Schopf, who as a graduate student contributed to the breakthrough, goes on to describe more recent research in the field'almost all of which has been done in the last 35 years. Now a professor of paleobiology at UCLA, he was part of the team that identified the oldest fossils thus far known: the 3,465-million-year-old Apex Chert microbes of Western Australia. Schopf combines his often entertaining personal story with an introduction to the discipline of paleobiology, with asides on the chemical makeup of life, questions still to be answered, and a skeptical look at the purported ``fossils'' from Mars. A good introduction to the history of a science on the cutting edge.