false 1737909 1 In Gorgon, geologist Peter Ward turns his attention reluctantly away from the asteroid collision that killed all the dinosaurs and instead focuses on a much older extinction event. As it turns out, the Permian extinction of 250 million years ago dwarfs the dino's 65-million-year-old Cretaceous-Tertiary armageddon. Ward's book is not a dry accounting of the fossil discoveries leading to this conclusion, but rather an intimate, first-person account of some of his triumphs and disappointments as a scientist. He draws a nice parallel between the Permian extinction and his own rather abrupt in research focus, revealing the agonizing steps he had to take to educate himself about a set of prehistoric creatures about which he knew almost nothing. These were the Gorgons, carnivorous reptiles whose ecological dominance preceded that of the more pop-culture-ready dinosaurs. 1735471 2004 Gorgon: Paleontology, Obsession, and the Greatest Catastrophe in Earth's History total:1|5:1|4:0|3:0|2:0|1:0| 1 5 1 0 5 0 false false Fri Oct 30 09:10:57 -0700 2009 Fri Oct 30 09:10:57 -0700 2009 http://www.goodreads.com/book_link/follow/8?book_id=1737909