author : John Hawks

This is the very slim course guidebook that accompanies the 24 lecture “Great Course” of the same name. It is essentially a very abbreviated transcript of each 30 minute lecture, a few pictures, some suggested reading, and a few questions to think about. (I watched the lectures, which is what I am reviewing here, and am using the book simply as an aide-memoire.)

This is a great overview of evolution from single celled creatures to Homo sapiens. The focus is on the palaeontology more than the evolution, however. So although the lectures are fascinating in their own right, they don’t really address “major transitions” as the core topic, more as a mention every now and again. So I was left a little disappointed. The closest to the topic on the tin was probably the discussion of the co-evolution of insects and flowers.

However, I did learn quite a bit of palaeontology, including a couple of surprising (to me) little snippets:

• grass evolved earlier than I had thought, during the late Cretaceous, not after the dinosaurs went extinct
• about one third of human genetic change since we separated from chimps 6M years ago has occurred in the last 40k years

This is the course guidebook that accompanies the 24 lecture “Great Course” of the same name. It is essentially an abbreviated transcript of each 30 minute lecture, a few pictures, some suggested reading, and a few questions to think about. (I watched the lectures, which is what I am reviewing here, and am using the book simply as an aide-memoire.)

The subtitle of the course is “great scientific debates”, and this is the main focus: each lecture is about a recent or still ongoing debate in paleontology, and is as much about the history of the debate as the underlying science. This is a great approach for showing how fluid some of the ideas still are, and how difficult it is to come to firm conclusions given the scant data. In many cases, the resolution to “is it A or B” is “a bit of both, actually”: that is, it is usually much more complicted, and interesting, than a simple yes/no answer.