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Adult Books - Nonfiction - Science
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Remarkable Creatures: Epic Adventures in the Search for the Origins of Species.
Carroll, Sean B. (author).
Feb. 2009. 352p. Houghton, hardcover, $26 (9780151014859). 508.
REVIEW.
First published January 1, 2009 (Booklist).
With this, his third book about evolution, molecular biologist Carroll reinforces his popularity by pulling an old reliable from the science writer’s toolbox: presenting scientists as heroic explorers. In paleontology, the real-life inspiration for Indiana Jones, pistol-packing Roy Chapman Andrews, fits the mold most snugly, and he is one of a dozen historic characters whom Carroll profiles. Exclaiming he “had a blast” researching these portraits, Carroll affects an enthused, colloquial style in describing how each person became a naturalist, fixed on a particular problem in the history of life, and triumphed magnificently with a breakthrough discovery, often after solitary questing against conventional scientific wisdom. Carroll’s sketch of naturalist Alexander von Humboldt sets the background of creationist explanations of life that Darwin and Wallace overturned; his accounts of their successors amount in broad outline to evolutionary history as understood today: that there was a Cambrian explosion; that land animals evolved from fish; that a cosmic impact extinguished dinosaurs; and that humans evolved in Africa. Carroll’s telling of the story through biography yields a winner for science readers. — Gilbert Taylor
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