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One of the twentieth century's great paleontologists and science writers, Stephen Jay Gould was, for Bruce S. Lieberman and Niles Eldredge, also a close colleague, mentor, and friend. In
Macroevolutionaries, they take up the tradition of Gould's acclaimed essays on natural history.
List of contents
Preface
1. The Three Musketeers of Macroevolution: Does Anyone Get to Be D’Artagnan?
2. Asleep at the Switch: Paleontological Life Lessons, Stasis, and the Genius of Yogi Berra
3. Survival of the Laziest: Does Evolution Permit Naps?
4. Time’s Arrow, Time’s Cycle, Times Square: Gould, Kant, and Super Dave
5. Expanding Evolution: Organisms and Species, the Soma, and the Technosphere
6. Declining Volatility: A General Evolutionary Principle and Its Relevance to Fossils, Stocks, and Stars
7. Paleo Personas: Musings on a Soviet Cephalopod, Norman Newell, and Mass Extinctions
8. Stardust Memories: Reading Evolution and Extinction in the Stars
9. Is Eternal Sex Necessary? Or, What Are These Coywolves Doing in My Backyard?
10. Darwin in the Galápagos: Running the Beagle Tape Backward
11. Of Cultural Nationalism, Hamlet, and the Cloaca Universalis: Why Citation Is the Best Policy
12. When Is a Raptor a Parrot? The Curious Case of the American Kestrel
13. What’s Your Favorite Trilobite? Walter Winchell Wouldn’t Have Cared
Acknowledgments
Notes
References
Index
About the author
Dr. Bruce Lieberman is a paleontologist and evolutionary biologist interested in macroevolution and the evolutionary history of invertebrates.Niles Eldredge has been a paleontologist on the curatorial staff of the American Museum of Natural History since 1969. A specialist in mid-Paleozoic phacopid trilobites, Dr. Eldredge, along with Stephen Jay Gould of Harvard, formulated a theory challenging Darwin's premise that evolution occurs gradually. Their theory, known as Punctuated Equilibria, asserts that evolution occurs in dramatic spurts interspersed with long periods of stasis.
Summary
One of the twentieth century’s great paleontologists and science writers, Stephen Jay Gould was, for Bruce S. Lieberman and Niles Eldredge, also a close colleague, mentor, and friend. In Macroevolutionaries, they take up the tradition of Gould’s acclaimed essays on natural history.
