Fetch Your Copy Aquagenesis: The Origin And Evolution Of Life In The Sea Created By Richard Ellis Shared As Kindle

this book. Read it while doing research for my novel The Geometry of God, and found it hugely inspiring, This is not the lighthearted romp that I thought it was going to be, Maybe I was lulled by the picture on the front, but I was not expecting something this dense, I wouldn't call it enjoyable, but it was really interesting at the same time, It has long dry spells, however, and I don't think I would read it again, Life on earth began in the sea, and in this tour de force of natural history, authority on marine biology and illustrator Richard Ellis chronicles more than three billion years of aquatic history.
From the first microbes and jawless fishes that evolved into the myriad species we know todaysharks, whales, dolphins, and, of course, humansEllis reveals the deep evolutionary mysteries of the sea.
Encyclopedic in scope and complemented by more than sixty drawings, Aquagenesis is a fascinating work that will astonish readers with the wonder, richness,

and complexity of the evolution of life.


"Quite simply, the best account we now have of the origins of human life, " Te Christian Science Monitor I was super duper excited to read this book and it was absolutely fascinating, I couldn't read the book in one sitting because I would get distracted picturing all of the organisms Ellis mentioned or drew.
I loved this book nonetheless and if any of you are interested in fossils and the ocean, definitely read this book! Intense lengthy book thoroughly analyzing sea creatures.
Definitely not for everyone but a bastion of knowledge This is one of my favorite books, It explores how terrestrial animals migrated from land to the oceans and thrived, A whale is the decendent from a doglike creature, Sea snakes, swimming birds and sea weasles are other creatures that are studied, Beautifully written, very entertaining. If I'm honest, I'm just not cerebral enough to get my funs reading about the fossil record, Not a bad way to close out this reading year, This is probably the hardest science book that I've read outside of a science class, The first hundred pages, in particular, were something of a slog, The book is meticulously referenced, which is academically sound, but makes for a more difficult reading experience as a typical sentence says, "As Smith and Wessonfound, blah blah blah.
" For the first hundred or so pages, there's a meticulous description of all the prehistoric nonvertebrate sea life for which we have a fossil record.
This is fascinating stuff in its own way, but was largely inaccessible to this nonbiologist/paleontologist, When I was a college student, I briefly enrolled in a class called Biology of Fishes, The class was way over my head and I had to drop out, but I'm sure I would have learned stuff in that class that would have helped me interpret this book.


Once we moved on to vertebrates, I was more engaged and found the reading absolutely engrossing, By that point, I'd also become more accustomed tot he scientific references and felt more able to breeze through them,

I'd recommend this book, particularly if you can bring yourself to just skip the first section if you aren't tremendously interested in invertebrate fossils.
But the description of the development of land animals and then the return of land animals to the sea is amazing, I was that annoying person who kept saying to my family, "Hey, did you know that whales are more closely related to elephants than fish" and "Wow, there's a really interesting theory that humans have an aquatic or semiaquatic ancestor that we haven't really discovered.
" A little slow at a few moments, but I actually found most of this book super fascinating, especially the parts about the Burgess Shale fossils and the evolution of whales and dolphins.
And I really enjoyed the way that Ellis lays things out, starting with the oldest and smallest known organisms and working up to the whales.
He explains things in a really interesting way as well I'll definitely read more of his work! Incredibly comprehensive and encyclopedic read on marine life and its rich and twisted history.
Every page is full of new information, which can be a bit much at times, but in the best way possible, A big lit review. Kinda dry. Although it can be a little dry and heavily laden with latin thanks to Linnaean classification, it is a compelling synopsis of the origin and radiation of life in the seas.
Aquagenesis: The Origin and Evolution of Life in the Sea

“That we live on land is, in the grander scheme of things, best regarded as an anomaly, or even an eccentricity albeit with sound evolutionary justification.
The story of life is, if we retain a true sense of proportion, a story of life at sea“Philip Ball

After I read Monarchs of the Sea by Danna Staaf last year, I wanted to read a deeper work on this topic and chose Aguagenesis by marine biologist Richard Ellis.
The author aims to demonstrate how life originated in water some,billion years ago, what species evolved first in water and why, what species followed them and how evolution changed courses multiple times with various animals choosing to dwell on land next and then returning to waters.
Richard Ellis starts his book by discussing the origin of water itself and ainchlong shrimplike creature without eyes capable of subsisting on hydrogen sulphide alone, which is poisonous to most living creatures, before talking about more complex and diverse marine life that roamed the oceans in the final stages of the Cretaceous period, somemillion years ago.
“More thanof all the species that have ever lived on Earth are now extinct” Ellis,:, says the author, and that makes that extinct life even more fascinating, especially in what it can tell us about the diversity of life and our own, human, origin.
This book may be on an academic side and now a bit dated, but it is still a perceptive and engaging account of the mysteries that still surround the evolution of life in the sea.


Richard Ellis starts his story from the very beginning, speculating that life began in some “pitchblack, superheated, sulphiderich environment without any connection whatsoever to sunlight” Ellis,:.
These conditions were not dissimilar to those found today in subterranean hydrothermal vents deep in the ocean, Ellis then discusses very primitive life forms that first emerged at that time, The period is called Ediacaran, and at the Burgess Shale, for example, evidence was found of ediacara biota, Such organisms encompass softbodied entities and fauna prevalent at that time and included dickinsonia, an organism that evolvedmillion years ago and which represents a symmetrical ribbed oval whose precise functions and are still unknown and cyclomedusa, a circular fossil.
Ellis states that that “ediacarabiota populated the ocean up until the end of the Precambrianmillion years ago, with the close of the Precambrian much of the ediacara biota became extinct”:.
This period was before the “greatest evolutionary event in Earths history: the Cambrian explosion”:,

When the “Cambrian explosion” happened somemillion years ago, simple animals began to be succeeded by many complex ones, and, in that period, we start to see animals that had jaws, shells, limbs, bones and teeth.
The author here asks some thoughtprovoking questions such as will conscious life ever had a chance to appear if the ediacaran fauna not died out and prevailed In the Cambrian period, first cephalopods, molluscs, crabs, nautiluses or “living fossils”, trilobites and other ammonites appeared.
There is still a debate why the “Cambrian explosion” of life occurred, and the most prevalent theory has to do with an increase in oxygen levels.
Thus, first vertebrates appeared, but the precise origin of vertebrates is also shrouded in mystery Ellis,:, In the Ordovician period, such creatures emerged as armoured Sacabambaspis or jawless fish, and first cephalochordates,

The Devonian period was an era of fish, “Fishes have been swimming on Earth for more thanmillion years, They predated the dinosaurs by hundreds of millions of years, and they were the first creatures to have an internal skeleton, In that sense, they are the ancestors of all vertebrates amphibians, reptiles, birds, and mammals, Fishes are among the most successful animals ever” Richard Ellis,:, The author states how the development of their jaws was a very important evolutionary advantage, Through their jaws, fish were able to prey on other species and the development of their “armour” helped them against predators, Dunkleosteus is probably best known armoured fish of the Devonian period and could reach the length ofmetres, Here it was interesting to read about the discovery of bioluminescence in fish or its the ability “to glow” in the dark.
Starfish, certain sharks and squid also have this ability, Some of them are able to glow because of the luminous bacteria that give off light, These bacteria cannot exist without its host Ellis,:, The function of this light may include attracting mates, indicating sex or luring preys,

In the Permian period, somemillion years ago, ancestors to many todays sharks appeared and at least the very first “sharks” looked nothing like sharks today, the author says.
For example, dental arrangements of these sharks sometimes appeared on their heads or backs Ellis,:, For example, helicoprion was a shark who had a very unusual, spiral teeth arrangement embedded in the lower jaw, Precursors to amphibians also appeared, including labyrinthodonts, living somemillion years ago, Another section of the book is titled “Return to the Sea Marine Reptiles” and here the author says: “reptiles evolved on land, but after their dispersal to various terrestrial habitats becoming eventually either dinosaurs or lizards in the process, some returned to the sea”:.
Thus, first sea turtles, snakes and crocodile ancestors are discussed, It was particularly interested to read that “crocodilians breezed through the cataclysmic KT Extinctionmillion years ago, which eliminated somepercent of all living animals.
but now face extinction threat from humans” Ellis,:, Nowadays, Philippine crocodile and Siamese crocodile are some of the most endangered crocodiles on earth there are aboutendangered Siamese crocodiles left in Cambodia.


In discussing marine mammals sea otters, seals, whales and their antecedents, it was interesting to discover some puzzles in the evolution of whales.
Ellis states that the oldest whale fossil dates to the Middle Eocene,million years ago, but whales may have existed long before that date, and that presentday whales have probably evolved from such creatures as indohyus, a mousedeerlike walking creature living somemillion years ago and from mesonychus ambulocetus, livingmillion years ago in the Eocene epoch.
The main question is, of course, why did early cetaceans take to water This is still a mystery, The rest of this chapter talks about the mysteries of echolocation, biological sonar, especially in dolphins, why it evolved and what evolutionary paths might have led to it.


Fun begins when the author starts discussing speculations that the man might have had purely aquatic ancestors, In thess, Elaine Morgan proposed a view, inspired by marine biologist Alister Hardy, that humans may be descendants from aquatic creatures because they are radically different from other mammals, for example, they display relative lack of body hair, have a power of speech and are bipedal like penguins.
The theory is that “there was a period during which early hominids lived a semiaquatic existence they were never aquatic like cetaceans, but, rather, went in and out of the water frequently” Ellis,:,.
However, one question still remains: why certain mammals returned to the sea and others did not

Aquagenesis is perhaps a book more on the evolution of sea life, rather than its origin, but the big plus of the book is that it does not dumb down its content like so many other nonfiction books do nowadays.
Besides, it introduced me to many other related interesting books, such as to John Longs The Rise of Fishes:Million Years of Evolution, John McCoskers Great White Shark, J.
G. M. Thewissens The Emergence of Whales: Evolutionary Patterns in the Origin of Cetacea and to Richard Forteys Trilobite: Eyewitness to Evolution, Overall, Aquagenesis is a thoughtprovoking book which discusses one fascinating topic, inspiring you to know more, .