WHAT did you do at work today? 鈥淚 moved Africa 600 kilometres to the south,鈥�
palaeontologist Richard Fortey might say. Trilobite! (Flamingo), his hymn to
these creatures, amazes and inspires. Trilobites lived in the sea.
Studying their fossils enables Fortey to map the ancient oceans stretching
around the world 500 million years ago. This is science writing at its best.
Turn to a modern sea, and the news is all gloom. The death of the
Mediterranean may be hastened by invading seaweed, says biologist Alexandre
Meinesz. Killer Algae (Chicago) recounts its swift spread from the sea off Nice
into the Adriatic. A riveting read.
A different kind of excitement threads through Dark Life (Bloomsbury) by
caver Michael Ray Taylor. Clambering through caves in search of strange forms of
life thriving in hot sulphurous springs or deep underground takes in some
hair-raising exploits as well as much good science.
Advertisement
Hostile environments foster new species, but hostile receptions threaten to
smother new ideas. Between 1977 and 1989 Thomas Dillehay excavated a site of
early human settlement in Monte Verde, Chile. The dating of his discoveries
shattered the notion that people had arrived in the Americas only 12,000 years
ago, as every schoolchild in the US was taught. But it wasn鈥檛 accepted without a
fight. Dillehay鈥檚 work pushes the date back to around 20,000 years ago鈥攁t
least. The Settlement of the Americas (Basic Books) is technical stuff, but a
fascinating story.
Controversy also dogs the minefield of cognitive science. Andy Clark of the
University of Sussex sums up the theories with his comprehensive Mindware
(Oxford). Marc Hauser鈥檚 Wild Minds (Penguin) is excellent on ideas about what鈥檚
going on in animal minds.