What do you think?
Rate this book
Mountains of Madness: A Scientist's Odyssey in Antarctica
In December of 1988, and again in October of 1992, paleontologist John Long mounted two scientific expeditions to the forbidding Transantarctic Mountain range of Antarctica. His goal: to find and bring back ancient specimens of fossilized fish dating back over 350 million years. Ultimately, the expedition fulfills this mission. But, perhaps even more important, Long's experiences on this vast and frozen wasteland end up altering his perspective on life forever.
Mountains of Madness is by turns enlightening, entertaining, and exhilerating as the highs of scientific discovery alternate with the grueling yet essential routines that must be practiced every day just to stay alive. It documents the day to day trials of a real Antarctic sledging expedition, enlivened by colorful descriptions of the diverse prehistory of the continent. In addition to a wealth of scientific information, we come to see the human side of Antarctic science.
Mountains of Madness is a moving tale of science, exploration, and human endurance. It is the story of how real science is practiced in a unique and demanding setting, chronicling what life is like in the field, where scientists come close to sacrificing their very lives for the sake of advancing human knowledge. Like the polar explorers from the early 1900s in whose footsteps they flollow, Long's team faces the unknown and the unpredictable in the pure and simple quest for knowledge.
250 pages, Hardcover
First published February 1, 2001
91 people want to read
About the author
John A. Long
35 books8 followersJohn Albert Long (born 1957) is an Australian paleontologist. He currently serves as Strategic Professor in Palaeontology at Flinders University, Adelaide.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
September 16, 2009
I enjoyed reading the descriptions of Antarctica. It was somewhat disturbing to realize I could relate to the temperatures he mentioned... to a degree. He's a Darwinist.
October 8, 2016
_Mountains of Madness_ is an account of two fossil-hunting expeditions to Antarctica by Australian paleontologist John Long. In this entertaining book, Long provides details of what it was like to travel and work in Antarctica, describing what he saw and felt, and also providing details of the results of his expeditions. Long with his colleagues made two trips to the southernmost continent, the first time in December 1988 and the second time in October 1991, though the bulk of the book describes his experiences on his significantly more productive second trip.
Long's 1991 expedition was not one for the faint-hearted. A"deep field" expedition - so-called because it was more than 200 kilometers from base and outside helicopter rescue range - was necessary for Long to reach the target of his fossil explorations, the remote Cook Mountains, part of the Transantarctic Mountain chain (Long dubbed the northernmost Cook Mountains the "Mountains of Madness" after a famous H.P. Lovecraft 1931 tale of a doomed Antarctic fossil hunting expedition).
In order to get to the fossil-bearing strata that was the expedition's target (Long was after fish fossils from the Devonian period, 355-408 million years ago), Long spent eight weeks out in the field on a two man, two woman expedition. Arriving on top of a glacier thanks to a ski-equipped C-130 transport aircraft, the expedition carried all of its supplies (including climbing gear, rations, and geological equipment) on top of sledges towed by snowmobiles called skidoos.
Though they had many advantages over the earliest explorers of Antarctica - notably motorized transport and satellite and radio communication - they were still at considerable risk. Only the thin fabric of their polar tents protected them from the howling, super-chilled winds of Antarctica. Frostbite, hypothermia, and dehydration (Antarctica is the driest continent) were constant concerns. Sudden blizzards could produce whiteout conditions, preventing all movement and keeping the expedition inside their tents for days, even delaying the expedition from reaching food caches and causing them to worry about running low or out of supplies. Glacial crevasses were difficult to detect as well as being deadly, nearly invisible dangers that could swallow up people or even vehicles. Long and his colleagues came up with the term "the A factor" to describe that no matter how well they thought they had planned for something, for various unpredictable reasons they lost about one day in four when working in the field in Antarctica, whether it was due to mechanical failure, waiting for someone or something to arrive, an injury or illness, or the weather.
On Long's first expedition, denied access due to events to prime fossil-hunting locales, the author was able to take in some of Antarctica's amazing sites. He visited the Dry Valleys region, a 1,860 square mile region of exposed rock and sand, an area in the Transantarctic Mountain region that remains free of ice and snow year round because the land is rising at a faster rate than glaciers can encroach on it and the scouring, howling, arid winds make snow and ice buildup impossible. Interesting locales within the Dry Valleys include Lake Vanda (an interesting stratified lake, usually covered by four meters of ice but whose deepest layers of water are considerably warmer thanks to a salty and chemical-rich makeup), the Onyx River (the continent's only river, which flows for a mere 60 days each year at the peak of summer), and seal mummies (half-skeletonized remains of desiccated seals, half buried in sand; it is believed that they are the remains of seals that had an ear infection, became disoriented, wandered inland, and starved to death). Long also visited Cape Royds, where he was able to visit Ernest Shackleton's preserved hut, restored to look as it did when the great explorer was there, and an Adelie penguin colony.
Long provided a little history of fossil exploration in Antarctica. The first fossils found were pieces of fossilized wood from Seymour Island, collected by Captain Carl Larsen, a Norwegian, in 1892-1893. The first major fossil expedition was in 1902 by Swedish geologist Otto Nordenskjold, who collected from the western islands off the Antarctic Peninsula, discovering Jurassic plant fossils, giant penguin fossils, and many fossil shells. The first vertebrate fossils from the Antarctic mainland were Devonian-age fish found in rocks near Mackay Glacier near Granite Harbor in 1911-1912 by Australian scientist Frank Debenham.
The main interest Long had though were his fish fossils. Long sought out what had been dubbed the Aztec Siltstone, fossil-bearing Devonian-age rocks that got their name from their original site of discovery that was a pyramidal mountain in a shape that suggested to the geologists an Aztec temple. The author had long been interested in the Devonian period as that was when fish evolution was at is most exciting and in Antarctic fossils as discoveries there could shed tremendous light on fish evolution in other areas of the long gone super continent known as Gondwana (which at one time was comprised of many now separate areas, such as Antarctica, Australia, New Zealand, South America, Africa, and India).
Long's second expedition was tremendously successful, resulting in the discovery of five new genera of lobe-finned fish, three new genera of sharks, and one genus of placoderms (an extinct group of armored fish). Long details in the book (published in 2001) how he was still preparing and analyzing specimens, including some as yet undescribed forms of lungfish, placoderms, some new types of acanthodians (an extinct group of spiny fishes), and a new ray-fined fish (ray-fined fish are the largest modern group of fish and include such familiar types as trout and goldfish). Long's fossil discoveries also aided in formulating theories regarding the reconstruction of Gondwana faunas from both Antarctica and other countries and also theories relating to the reconstruction of the geographic position of Gondwana itself.
Long enthusiastically described the fossils he found and their great importance. My only compliant was that there were no illustrations of either the fossils or how the fish might have looked in life.
Long's 1991 expedition was not one for the faint-hearted. A"deep field" expedition - so-called because it was more than 200 kilometers from base and outside helicopter rescue range - was necessary for Long to reach the target of his fossil explorations, the remote Cook Mountains, part of the Transantarctic Mountain chain (Long dubbed the northernmost Cook Mountains the "Mountains of Madness" after a famous H.P. Lovecraft 1931 tale of a doomed Antarctic fossil hunting expedition).
In order to get to the fossil-bearing strata that was the expedition's target (Long was after fish fossils from the Devonian period, 355-408 million years ago), Long spent eight weeks out in the field on a two man, two woman expedition. Arriving on top of a glacier thanks to a ski-equipped C-130 transport aircraft, the expedition carried all of its supplies (including climbing gear, rations, and geological equipment) on top of sledges towed by snowmobiles called skidoos.
Though they had many advantages over the earliest explorers of Antarctica - notably motorized transport and satellite and radio communication - they were still at considerable risk. Only the thin fabric of their polar tents protected them from the howling, super-chilled winds of Antarctica. Frostbite, hypothermia, and dehydration (Antarctica is the driest continent) were constant concerns. Sudden blizzards could produce whiteout conditions, preventing all movement and keeping the expedition inside their tents for days, even delaying the expedition from reaching food caches and causing them to worry about running low or out of supplies. Glacial crevasses were difficult to detect as well as being deadly, nearly invisible dangers that could swallow up people or even vehicles. Long and his colleagues came up with the term "the A factor" to describe that no matter how well they thought they had planned for something, for various unpredictable reasons they lost about one day in four when working in the field in Antarctica, whether it was due to mechanical failure, waiting for someone or something to arrive, an injury or illness, or the weather.
On Long's first expedition, denied access due to events to prime fossil-hunting locales, the author was able to take in some of Antarctica's amazing sites. He visited the Dry Valleys region, a 1,860 square mile region of exposed rock and sand, an area in the Transantarctic Mountain region that remains free of ice and snow year round because the land is rising at a faster rate than glaciers can encroach on it and the scouring, howling, arid winds make snow and ice buildup impossible. Interesting locales within the Dry Valleys include Lake Vanda (an interesting stratified lake, usually covered by four meters of ice but whose deepest layers of water are considerably warmer thanks to a salty and chemical-rich makeup), the Onyx River (the continent's only river, which flows for a mere 60 days each year at the peak of summer), and seal mummies (half-skeletonized remains of desiccated seals, half buried in sand; it is believed that they are the remains of seals that had an ear infection, became disoriented, wandered inland, and starved to death). Long also visited Cape Royds, where he was able to visit Ernest Shackleton's preserved hut, restored to look as it did when the great explorer was there, and an Adelie penguin colony.
Long provided a little history of fossil exploration in Antarctica. The first fossils found were pieces of fossilized wood from Seymour Island, collected by Captain Carl Larsen, a Norwegian, in 1892-1893. The first major fossil expedition was in 1902 by Swedish geologist Otto Nordenskjold, who collected from the western islands off the Antarctic Peninsula, discovering Jurassic plant fossils, giant penguin fossils, and many fossil shells. The first vertebrate fossils from the Antarctic mainland were Devonian-age fish found in rocks near Mackay Glacier near Granite Harbor in 1911-1912 by Australian scientist Frank Debenham.
The main interest Long had though were his fish fossils. Long sought out what had been dubbed the Aztec Siltstone, fossil-bearing Devonian-age rocks that got their name from their original site of discovery that was a pyramidal mountain in a shape that suggested to the geologists an Aztec temple. The author had long been interested in the Devonian period as that was when fish evolution was at is most exciting and in Antarctic fossils as discoveries there could shed tremendous light on fish evolution in other areas of the long gone super continent known as Gondwana (which at one time was comprised of many now separate areas, such as Antarctica, Australia, New Zealand, South America, Africa, and India).
Long's second expedition was tremendously successful, resulting in the discovery of five new genera of lobe-finned fish, three new genera of sharks, and one genus of placoderms (an extinct group of armored fish). Long details in the book (published in 2001) how he was still preparing and analyzing specimens, including some as yet undescribed forms of lungfish, placoderms, some new types of acanthodians (an extinct group of spiny fishes), and a new ray-fined fish (ray-fined fish are the largest modern group of fish and include such familiar types as trout and goldfish). Long's fossil discoveries also aided in formulating theories regarding the reconstruction of Gondwana faunas from both Antarctica and other countries and also theories relating to the reconstruction of the geographic position of Gondwana itself.
Long enthusiastically described the fossils he found and their great importance. My only compliant was that there were no illustrations of either the fossils or how the fish might have looked in life.
May 12, 2021
This is a five star read from me, then again, I am living in Perth, Western Australia, so I can relate to things mentioned in Mountains of Madness. This book was so exciting and thoughtful, as well as funny in places. Enjoyed all the references to H.P. Lovecraft's At the Mountains of Madness. I enjoyed the discussion of fish fossils as well as all the references to food. The recipes from Antarctica are such a laugh!
Good references and source materials at the end of the book. Certainly a five star book.
Good references and source materials at the end of the book. Certainly a five star book.
March 9, 2018
Thought it was great but i have to give this review or ill get an F on my paper
January 16, 2015
I understand that it is unfair to judge a book on how you wanted it to be and not how it actually is but that won't stop me. Too many archaic fishes and not enough Lovecraft. I was hoping for a scientists view of HPL's extremely technical short novel but it was not to be. Sitting in a tent during a blizzard reading it aloud must have been quite fun though.
Otherwise this is a decent account of life in Antarctica from the point of view of a proper researcher, not a visiting journalist/writer (as so many others are) and, as such, does give a useful corrective view to the rather dazed 'isn't the natural world incredible?' that seems to be the creative visitors default position. Chipping away at shale to collect tiny ancient shark scales in between being stuck in tents for days on end -and still being impressed and enjoying it- does balance things somewhat.
Otherwise this is a decent account of life in Antarctica from the point of view of a proper researcher, not a visiting journalist/writer (as so many others are) and, as such, does give a useful corrective view to the rather dazed 'isn't the natural world incredible?' that seems to be the creative visitors default position. Chipping away at shale to collect tiny ancient shark scales in between being stuck in tents for days on end -and still being impressed and enjoying it- does balance things somewhat.
August 10, 2014
The thought of being stranded in Antarctica is one of which horror stories are made. Long would agree, I have the feeling, as he read Lovecraft while holed up in a tent on the bottom of the world. A fun fusion of fossils, freezing temperatures, and fantasy stories. Further comments may be found on my blog: Sects and Violence in the Ancient World.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews