Exceptional and Inspiring.

I was very pleaantly surprised by Sean Carroll's book "Remarkable Creatures: Epic Adventures In the Search For The Origins of Species". One forgets (or at least I did) how recent many of the discoveries about life on earth really are. For more than a thousand years, mankind's vision of the development of life, about fossils, the age of man itself were based on legends, superstition, or religious teachings. It was only in the past 150 years or so that great strides were made in our understanding of the earth itself and the species which inhabit it. This book tells the stories of some of the individuals who had the thoughts, the insights, and the vision to see what no one else had been able to see before.

Most of us know the story of Darwin and his discoveries and theories on evolution, but that's just one of the stories told in Carroll's book. Included are discoveries of our ancient ancestors, new life forms, and other stories in natural history. The work and discoveries of others may not be as familiar to all readers, but all their stories are interesting and informative. ( )

Remarkable Creatures shows us the remarkable journeys that men like Alexander von Humboldt, Charles Darwin and Alfred Russell Wallace embarked on to try to solve the “mystery of mysteries” about the origins of species.

We meet scientists like John Ostrom, who was able to make the evolutionary connection between birds and dinosaurs via a fossil named Archaeopteryx, an ancient bird that lived alongside the great beasts. Explorer and discoverer Roy Andrews found a plethora of dinosaur bones, including intact dinosaur eggs.

Fun Fact: Roy Andrews was famous for always carrying his pistol and wearing his hat while on expeditions. He may have been the inspiration for the character Indiana Jones!

Louis and Mary Leakey were the husband/wife team that located hundreds of early Stone Age hand-made tools in Africa, not to mention fossils of the earliest species of Man, Australopithecus. This was unexpected since it was believed at the time that the origins of Man were in Asia, so their discoveries turned the paleoanthropology world upside down.

Carroll also introduces us to the scientists who were able to study ancient DNA and provide an age when Man and Ape split from our common ancestor. We also learn about Neanderthals and their relation (or lack thereof) with modern humans.

Author Sean B. Carroll is a great writer and makes learning about all these amazing people fun and engaging. There is also plenty of photos to add to the narrative. The biographies and the descriptions of the discoveries are short, but I didn’t mind. This was a great introduction for those who want to meet the big names of the archaeology and anthropology fields and learn a bit about the amazing discoveries they made! ( )

I've read a lot of books on evolution, and this is one of the best in terms of showing the field work underpinning the science. I especially appreciated including the errors and false trails that science followed, such as the widespread belief that humans must have evolved in Asia, or that huge conflict apparent age conflicts between fossil evidence for human evolution and genetic evidence. The book makes for a series of fascinating real life detective stories as again and again evidence comes to light that radically changes our understanding and assumptions of what has come before. ( )