Eight Little Piggies: Reflections in Natural HistoryThis collection of essays range from history to the latest theories in biology, from controversies over palaeontology to the origins of language. The title is a pun and as always with Gould, the joke has a point that illustrates the largest pattern of life's history. for millennia, the animals that populated the earth had four toes on each foot, or six. If evolution had taken a tiny shift - if man's ancestors had inherited a couple of genes in a different form - our canonical number, based on man's fingers and toes, might be eight instead of ten. Stephen Jay Gould has also written Wonderful Life, Bully for Brontosaurus and Finders Keepers. |
Contents
A Reflective Prologue | 11 |
Unenchanted Evening | 23 |
A Proper Scale for | 41 |
Copyright | |
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Acanthostega adaptation Agassiz anatomy ancestors animals apes archetype argued argument arthropod Barrington basic birds bones brain breeds Burgess Shale called Cambrian Cenozoic Cephalaspis complex creatures cultural Darwin Darwinian digits direct discovery diversity dogs Dubois Dubois's earth entire essay evolution evolutionary evolved example fishes fossil function genetic genus geological Goethe Halkieria Halley Halley's Hallucigenia human ichthyosaur Ichthyostega intellectual Lamarck later life's lineage living Lottia mammalian mammals mass extinction maximal ment metaphor Microdictyon million modern Moorea multicellular Museum Natural History natural selection never ocean onychophorans organisms original orthogenetic ostracoderms paleontologists Paley Partula pattern pigeons predictable principle progress represent reptiles scientific scientists sclerites sense sequence shell snails species specimens Stensiö story structure success swim bladder T. H. Clark Tahiti tail tailbend terrestrial tetrapods theme theory tion trigonian Ussher variation vertebrates Walcott wedge Whitman wrote Zostera