Customer Reviews

Animal Evolution: Interrelationships of the Living Phyla

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(2)
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1 star:		(1)

 

 

This book is an excellent presentation of one expert's
interpretation of the current known facts of morphologic
animal cladistics. He has studied the subject of the
relationships of the animal phyla and synthesized his
understanding into an interesting and well written book.
He presents some knew and potentially controversial
branchings of the evolutionary tree of the animals.
The only negative is that the book can be technical and
dense with facts at times. This should not inhibit the
interested reader from buying this book.

I thought this book was a brilliant exposition about the taxonomy of the phyla but it gave one little feel for the evolutionary history of animals. By cutting much of the discussion at the level of the phyla, a lot that I was hoping to learn something about was completely missing. In addition I thought it odd that tardigrades and even more obscure phyla had as much discussion as vertebrates. The chapter on nucleic acid sequencing seemed disorganized with it difficult to follow why some trees were more relevant than others. The time lines of the processes were hardly mentioned.

Overall I thought it read like a taxonomy lecturer's notes. I suppose these are hard words for what is so obviously expert's comprehesive work. However popular synthesizers like Sagan or Gould never wrote a book like this. So it would seem if you what to know structural details, taxonomy, embryology, this is the great book, but I wanted the big picture with organizing themes, and came away a bit disappointed.

I bought this book when it first came out and quite enjoyed it. However Dr. Nielsen is not in the mainstream- he tends to reject most molecular data and bases his analysis on more traditional morphologic analysis, much of which is no longer accepted as being correct. I do not know his 2006 opinions, but as late as 2003 i think he was still arguing against the movement to ecdysozoa and lophotrochozoa. So if you want to know what the majority of biologists think- i would suggest james valentines book (on the origin of phyla) which is fairly close to the modern thoughts and i think easier reading with very good background info- or for a shorter version- just search the web for Halanych "the new view of animal phylogeny"- that article can be found in its entirety in pdf- but is not a book that gives background info- you have to have basic phyletic knowledge to understand it. Also keep in mind that whatever you read will be a bit out of date- 2006 data that seems to be fairly well accepted puts the urochordates closer to craniata(vertebrata) than cephalochordates and is not in any summary that i can find (not even wikipedia) and there is compelling evidence from mitochondrial DNA that argues that placazoa is basal to porifera.

I really enjoyed reading this book because it is detailed and up to date.

It's interesting how the imagination of this author of all the branchings of the animal kingdom can be taken seriously. Where's the beef though as far as physical proof? It's all based upon his imagination of what MAY be. Just because big words are used doesn't make it so. The evolutionists STILL have no physical proof of how a whale used to be cow used to be a whale, or whatever their ridiculous theory is to explain away one of God's beautiful sea mammals.

Also, if the earth was as old as the evolutionists say it is, the sun would have engulfed the earth due to the size the sun would have been that many billions of years ago. Also, the moon would have practically been scraping the earth. Our DNA is millions of times more complicated than the code contained in Windows software. Does anyone really believe mathematically it's possible for our DNA, much less ALL DNA, to have evolved over the supposed billions of years they claim the earth has been around? Time doesn't equal order. All of the different species of living things are much much too beautiful and complicated to have just luckily evolved. It's absurd. It's complete junk science.

I'm sorry evolutionists. Even me being a lay person can easily explain away your lies and deceit. There are hundreds and hundreds more examples I could give to destroy your myth which entire purpose is to try to explain that a God doesn't exist. I pray that God has mercy on your souls for perpetuating this horribly destuctive myth that a 5 year old can see through. It's so hilarious because the only physical proof the evolutionists can provide is some artists' rendition of how things MAY have evolved. Anyone can go down to their local museum of natural history and ask the curator to show some physical proof of ANY plant or animal evloving from one state to another. They'll have nothing to show you. All they can show is the micro-evolution that is programmed into our genes that allows for adaption in a minimal way, ie, breeding of dogs, etc etc. But they can't show any linkage from pond scum to human, pond scum to lion, pond scum to flower, etc.

If anyone wants the real truth about this subject, I suggest reading a book by James Perloff entitled "Tornado In A Junkyard".