What do you think?
Rate this book
The Garden of Ediacara
During an expedition in Sonora, Mexico, paleontologist Mark A. S. McMenamin unearthed fossils of creatures dated at approximately 600 million years old―making them the oldest large body fossils ever discovered. These circular fossils, known as Ediacarans, seemed to defy explanation. Representatives of marine life forms that existed in Precambrian times, as much as fifty million years before life on earth began to diversify rapidly, the specimens bore a superficial resemblance to jellyfish.
A typical Ediacaran had a quilted body, three curving arms at the center, and a fringe of fine radial lines. McMenamin's curiosity was fueled by the puzzle of whether the Ediacarans were animals or some other type of organism. How could such complex forms of life appear so suddenly, without extensive records of prior evolution? Yet, this seems to be exactly what the Ediacarans had done.
The Garden of Ediacara presents a mesmerizing documentary of a major scientific discovery, detailing McMenamin's trip to Namibia, where, with a party that included the renowned paleontologist Adolf Seilacher, the author investigates a spectacular cast made from a colony of fossils in the Nama desert. He chronicles the long, often futile search made by earlier scientists for Ediacara, which began more than a century ago in Europe, North America, and Africa, and the various types of Ediacaran fossils that have been uncovered in the years since.
McMenamin concludes that Ediacarans were not animals because they never passed through the ball-shaped embryonic stage peculiar to known animal life forms. But, remarkably, Ediacarans seem to have developed a central nervous system and a brain independent from animal evolution. This startling conclusion has profound implications for our understanding of evolutionary biology, for it indicates that the path toward intelligent life was embarked upon more than once on this planet.
A typical Ediacaran had a quilted body, three curving arms at the center, and a fringe of fine radial lines. McMenamin's curiosity was fueled by the puzzle of whether the Ediacarans were animals or some other type of organism. How could such complex forms of life appear so suddenly, without extensive records of prior evolution? Yet, this seems to be exactly what the Ediacarans had done.
The Garden of Ediacara presents a mesmerizing documentary of a major scientific discovery, detailing McMenamin's trip to Namibia, where, with a party that included the renowned paleontologist Adolf Seilacher, the author investigates a spectacular cast made from a colony of fossils in the Nama desert. He chronicles the long, often futile search made by earlier scientists for Ediacara, which began more than a century ago in Europe, North America, and Africa, and the various types of Ediacaran fossils that have been uncovered in the years since.
McMenamin concludes that Ediacarans were not animals because they never passed through the ball-shaped embryonic stage peculiar to known animal life forms. But, remarkably, Ediacarans seem to have developed a central nervous system and a brain independent from animal evolution. This startling conclusion has profound implications for our understanding of evolutionary biology, for it indicates that the path toward intelligent life was embarked upon more than once on this planet.
368 pages, Paperback
First published April 15, 1998
2 people are currently reading
73 people want to read
About the author
Mark A.S. McMenamin
10 books5 followersMark McMenamin is Professor of Geology in the Department of Earth and Environment at Mount Holyoke College in South Hadley, Massachusetts.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
October 23, 2012
I wish I could give this a 2.5. The subject matter was interesting - when the author was sticking to it. I learned a lot about the Ediacara - what we know about them, how they might relate to other life, how they might reproduce, when they lived, where their fossils have been found.
Unfortunately, the author is very rambling - mixing up interesting scientific chapters with overly detailed personal accounts of uninteresting details of his life. This is paralleled by the odd choice of figures - some good photos and drawings, then random uninteresting photos (the falling down horse shed?). I wanted more pictures and drawings of the fossils, more timelines, and drawings of stratigraphy to explain the geological terms he throws about.
The last chapters were philosophical. They lost me a bit at times (so many long quotations!) and I don't think he provided good evidence of why convergent evolution is best explained by directionality in evolution. I still think that responses to environmental factors and contingency can explain all of his scenarios.
Overall, I'm glad I read it to broaden my knowledge of early life on earth and the possibility of very different life forms. I wish he had expounded more on how he thinks Ediacara grow and might reproduce - very interesting speculations!
Unfortunately, the author is very rambling - mixing up interesting scientific chapters with overly detailed personal accounts of uninteresting details of his life. This is paralleled by the odd choice of figures - some good photos and drawings, then random uninteresting photos (the falling down horse shed?). I wanted more pictures and drawings of the fossils, more timelines, and drawings of stratigraphy to explain the geological terms he throws about.
The last chapters were philosophical. They lost me a bit at times (so many long quotations!) and I don't think he provided good evidence of why convergent evolution is best explained by directionality in evolution. I still think that responses to environmental factors and contingency can explain all of his scenarios.
Overall, I'm glad I read it to broaden my knowledge of early life on earth and the possibility of very different life forms. I wish he had expounded more on how he thinks Ediacara grow and might reproduce - very interesting speculations!
September 24, 2022
Dive into a world so intriguing, so bizarre, so completely disparate from the reality that we as humans now find ourselves living in. Mark A. S. McMenamin, an authority on Ediacaran biota, does his best to describe a period in time completely enshrouded in mystery. The Ediacarans, called by some the Vendobionts, represent a phase in animal evolution (or perhaps just animal-adjacent) that continues to confound and drive scientists to contention. From the triradially symmetrical trilobozoans to the frond-like petalonamids to the segmented proarticulates, the Ediacaran period marked a time of evolutionary experimentation. So what exactly were these strange creatures? Some propose that they were early members of the Cnidaria assemblage, which includes the jellyfish and the corals. Others, including the author, postulates a more dynamic explanation, concluding that these forms represent an early iteration of multicellularity adjacent to that seen in the animal kingdom. As an author of fiction, I like a good story, and the complexities involved in the latter explanation tend to intrigue me more, though I’m no expert on the matter. Whatever these creatures were, understanding their place within our earthly family tree will be crucial to our modern synthesis of evolution. A captivating and accessible read.
December 28, 2010
His megalomania is a little hard to take, but other than that, an interesting book.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews