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Title: Early Life by Lynn Margulis, Michael F. Dolan, AAOS ISBN: 0-7637-1463-1 Publisher: Jones & Bartlett Pub Pub. Date: April, 2002 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $39.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.33 (3 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: Margulis at her best -- but a missed opportunity
Comment: I wish this book were available as a normal paperback. I really like nearly everything about it. Understanding Margulis on the origin of Meiosis is so much easier with line drawings! If you are interested in Margulis's ideas about the serial endosymbiont theory and how the eukaryotic cell arose, it's hard to do better than "Early Life." The clarity of this book is wonderful. Why a "missed opportunity"? Despite the fact that this is a new edition with Michael F. Dolan, the science appears not to have been updated. For example, Margulis thought an "aggressive" bacterium such as Bdellovibrio might have invaded cells to form mitochondria. Genomic research has shown that mitochondria came from a Rickettsia species. In illustrations, Bdellovibrio is still shown and the Rickettsia connection is not mentioned. Does Margulis completely reject evidence from nucleic acid sequencing?
Evidently -- because the biggest "hole" in this book is a complete lack of recognition that the Archaea are something completely different from Bacteria. Margulis makes a friendly mention of Carl Woese in the introduction of the new edition, as if his research were the only stone in the massive structure that shows Archaea are a separate domain of life. It is not just the rRNA's that are different (as Woese showed) -- the membrane lipids are different, the Archaea have histones (like eukaryotes) and some have multiple chromosomes (like eukaryotes). Lumping them with other "prokaryotes" in spite of the current state of science is nothing less than a willful act of ignorance, and it's too bad that this book is damaged by her prejudices. I hope some day that a third edition will include modern scientific discoveries. And I hope that some day her "Five Kingdoms" will be updated to "Six." But somehow I doubt it will happen.
Rating: 5
Summary: Comprehensive book on early life
Comment: This book on early life delves persuasively into the chemistry of ancestral prokaryotes. Although Carl Woese's three-kingdom classification system is presently scientifically fashionable, archea (archeobacteria) are morphologically identical to other bacteria, and so the wisdom of giving them their own kingdom, despite their RNA differences (and RNA changes over evolutionary time) is debatable.
Rating: 4
Summary: I have to say, since I am Dorion Sagan
Comment: that that last reviewer did not know what the bleep they were talking about. Yes, this is a very good book but, listen, my mum, Lynn was the one who put the idea of "seme" in Microcosmos! Where people (and Richard Dawkins was one!) get off "mind-reading" who writes which part of a co-authored book is beyond me. The writer was correct, however, that this is a very good book, perhaps the best, for a nuts-and-bolts overview of early life. Now for some fluff: Check out our new book Acquiring Genomes: A Theory of the Origins of Species--if you like it, Frank (or whatever your name is) be sure to credit the good parts to me! Also check out Up From Dragons: The Evolution of Human Intelligence and Into the Cool: The Thermodynamics of Life (forthcoming) if you are curious...
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Title: Life on a Young Planet : The First Three Billion Years of Evolution on Earth by Andrew H. Knoll ISBN: 0691009783 Publisher: Princeton Univ Pr Pub. Date: 17 March, 2003 List Price(USD): $29.95 |
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Title: Acquiring Genomes: A Theory of the Origins of Species by Lynn Margulis, Dorion Sagan, Ernst Mayr ISBN: 0465043917 Publisher: Basic Books Pub. Date: 18 June, 2002 List Price(USD): $28.00 |
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Title: When Life Nearly Died: The Greatest Mass Extinction of All Time by Michael Benton, Michael J. Benton ISBN: 050005116X Publisher: Thames & Hudson Pub. Date: May, 2003 List Price(USD): $29.95 |
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Title: Microcosmos: Four Billion Years of Evolution from Our Microbial Ancestors by Lynn Margulis, Dorion Sagan, Lewis Thomas ISBN: 0520210646 Publisher: University of California Press Pub. Date: May, 1997 List Price(USD): $19.95 |
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Title: Symbiotic Planet : A New Look at Evolution (Science Masters Series) by Lynn Margulis ISBN: 0465072720 Publisher: Basic Books Pub. Date: March, 2000 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
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