A Book Report On A Wonderfull Life — страница 3

his time. He wasn t trying to change the rule just trying to make a discovery. He surely knew that these species had little to do with horseshoe-crabs but he still but them in that phyla because he had no desire to change our view of science and crustaceans. This is what the examination did though, so Walcott might as well gone ahead and done what he though was right. When we saw these very complex creatures as entirely new phyla that had no ancestors linking them to this time, we realize something. They realized that there must be hundreds of other phyla s that had dissipated for some unknown reason. Another question that was answered was what had happened during the Cambrian explosion. There weren t to many Cambrian fossils before burgess. These fossils were well preserved at

least well enough to know and distinguish a lot of different species. This showed us that anthropoids took over the world during the Cambrian Era. This is also a big fact in the world today. People say this is the time of the mammal. This is in no way true. The Cenozoic time period is the time of the anthropoid. They are more complex and greater in population. Without anthropoids this world would have a very hard time surviving. This book was classified as an evolution book. This is exactly the topic that the book covered. This book spoke much about the Cambrian Era, and also about how these specific specimens came about and how they became extinct or why they as a whole was wiped out. This book also explains the art of fossil extraction, from tiny little drill and tweezers to

explosive charges and pick axes. This book at first we a really big interest to me. I read about Iconography and how it was wrong and how evolution would be better described as tree shaped. Then it talked about how the fossils were found and a brief description of Charles Walcott. This is when it started to get boring. I really didn t need to read eight pages on the misery that a dead scientist went through when his son died. Then Stephen Jay Gould gave his opinion on the Burgess Shale and this is when I realized that this guy is a really big NERD. I would like to cite a quotation from the book, “Oh why was I not made of Stone like these.” He quoted this form Quasimoto from the Hunchback Of Notre Dame. This guy is a little to obsessed. I can see that maybe the rocks could

mean something to him scientifically but there is no need to get personal. Don t tell anyone but I think the guy is kinda weird. All right the next part was the boringest (x is that a word?) part in the entire book. Gould starts describing the fossils, one by one. I read this and I had to take notes on it, it was that boring. I kept on falling asleep and had to write down what page I was one whenever I started to nod off. Anyway, the only good part in these chapters was the cool little pictures of all the specimen. They all looked like little aliens. It was also neat to find out what exactly made the Burgess Shale form (it turns out it was an ocean mud slide that instantly preserved all of these creatures). The rest of the book was neat because it describes what the Burgess Shale

proved and disproved. I learned a lot from this book. From the fact that some scientists have to pick at rocks with tweezers to the fact that Pikaia had what is though to be the earliest form of a spinal cord and column. I also learned that all those advertisements that show humans walking along and becoming something else aren t right. What actually happened is more of a tree or cone effect. Another meaningful concept that I learned is that Diversity is thought to be bottom heavy when it comes to time. That means that the later on in time the less diverse life is. This is shown in a Christmas tree type of effect. With the Christmas tree look it shows that life started of very much the same with only single celled organism. Then exploded and became very diverse. Burt slowly as

these creatures adapt to their environment they become more alike all the time. Personally I think this book was worth the boring parts. It had a lot of interesting fact and was fun to read at times. I would recommend it to anyone who would like to know more about evolution.