The sea-change the worldwide hunt for the ancestors of animals Graham Bell

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Bell, Graham, 1949- author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Evolution (Biology).

Physical Description:

1 online resource

Place of Publication:

Oxford University Press, 2026.

New York, NY Oxford University Press [2026]

Summary:

The Sea-Change: The Worldwide Hunt for the Ancestors of Animals is about one of the most absorbing puzzles in the whole of science: how the earliest animals lived, and what they looked like. These questions have haunted biology for two centuries because the facts seem to challenge its central dogma, the theory of evolution by natural selection. One of the main objections to Darwin's theory of evolution was that the earliest fossils are already large and complex animals, with no sign of the simpler predecessors that the theory requires. Graham Bell reviews the fossil record of the earliest animals and draws two controversial conclusions. There was a long-hidden history of the first animals, which were minute and soft-bodied, so left no fossils. They lived on the sea floor and gradually assembled the genetic architecture required for development. Second, most of the Ediacaran fossils were not animal, but a completely different kind of large organism. These two conclusions together lead to a detailed narrative of the stages involved in the early evolution of animals, leading up to the 'Cambrian explosion' which laid the basis of modern biodiversity.-- Provided by publisher

Contents:

A false start

The golden spike

Mud

Animals and individuals

Ancestors and embryos

The grand design

The magic molecule

The early Cambrian fossils

The Ediacaran fossils

Sea changes

The elusive ancestor - The Ediacaran thread

The Cambrian tapestry

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index

Description based on online resource and publisher information; title from PDF title page (viewed on March 5, 2026)

Other Format:

Print version :

ISBN:

9780197797464

0197797466

9780197797440

019779744X

OCLC:

1577221679

Publisher Number:

CIPO000362435

Access Restriction:

Restricted for use by site license