At the Water's Edge : Fish with Fingers, Whales with Legs, and How Life Came Ashore but Then Went Back to Sea [Paperback]

Carl Zimmer (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0684856239 | ISBN-13: 978-0684856230 | Publication Date: September 8, 1999

Everybody Out of the Pond

At the Water's Edge will change the way you think about your place in the world. The awesome journey of life's transformation from the first microbes 4 billion years ago to Homo sapiens today is an epic that we are only now beginning to grasp. Magnificent and bizarre, it is the story of how we got here, what we left behind, and what we brought with us.

We all know about evolution, but it still seems absurd that our ancestors were fish. Darwin's idea of natural selection was the key to solving generation-to-generation evolution -- microevolution -- but it could only point us toward a complete explanation, still to come, of the engines of macroevolution, the transformation of body shapes across millions of years. Now, drawing on the latest fossil discoveries and breakthrough scientific analysis, Carl Zimmer reveals how macroevolution works. Escorting us along the trail of discovery up to the current dramatic research in paleontology, ecology, genetics, and embryology, Zimmer shows how scientists today are unveiling the secrets of life that biologists struggled with two centuries ago.

In this book, you will find a dazzling, brash literary talent and a rigorous scientific sensibility gracefully brought together. Carl Zimmer provides a comprehensive, lucid, and authoritative answer to the mystery of how nature actually made itself.

Editorial Reviews

Review

Michael S. Y. Lee Nature One of the most fascinating topics in biology....[Zimmer] clearly understands the diverse scientific issues involved, and cuts through the scientific jargon so anyone can comprehend them.

Philip Gingerich The New York Times Book Review Zimmer does a good job of explaining how profoundly different are the physiological and structural requirements of life in water compared to life on land.

Booklist A fascinating story, which Zimmer unfolds as a tale of high-stakes scientific sleuthing...thanks to marvelously lucid writing.

Publishers Weekly More than just an informative book about macroevolution itself, this is an entertaining history of ideas written with literary flair and technical rigor.

Ernst Mayr Museum of Comparative Zoology, Harvard University Zimmer is a born storyteller and succeeds in giving us pure pleasure while at the same time teaching us up-to-date science.

The Atlantic Monthly Zimmer, an honored science journalist...leaves life among the fossils agreeably bright.

Kevin Padian Professor and Curator, Department of Integrative Biology and Museum of Paleontology, University of California, Berkeley Anyone with an interest in evolution should pick up this book to get on the cutting edge of discovery.

James Shreeve author of The Neandertal Enigma From the first page Carl sets his book apart by diving straight into the most neglected, least understood mystery of all: how wholly new body plans and parts could have been created by natural forces that at first glance would seem to work to destroy innovation. Macroevolution is adaptation without a net. Carl's lucid, often lovely prose is making me finally understand how a species could pull it off without plunging into extinction. He is also very deft at crafting quick-bear narrative out of the lives, inspirations, foibles and occasional dastardliness of the scientists who have pursued this question, both historically and in modern times. I fully expect that At the Water's Edge will do for macroevolution what Jon Weiner's The Beak of the Finch did for microevolution or David Quammen's The Song of the Dodo did for extinction. I'm sure the book is going to really soar.

Robert L. Carroll McGill University, author of Vertebrate Paleontology and Evolution Zimmer is an accomplished popularizer of scientific subjects. This book provides a strong basis for the public understanding of evolutionary patterns and processes

Peter Ward University of Washington, author of The End of Evolution This most compelling of evolutionary episodes is told with grace and style, Zimmer's book is a rock hammer blow to those who doubt that evolution is an understandable law of nature.

About the Author

Carl Zimmer writes for National Geographic, Natural History, Science, Nature, Audubon, and National Wildlife. A former senior editor at Discover, he has won the American Institute of Biological Sciences Media Award and the Evert Clark Media Award. At the Water's Edge is his first book. He lives in New York City.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 304 pages
• Publisher: Free Press (September 8, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0684856239
• ISBN-13: 978-0684856230
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.5 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (18 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #240,796 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #87 in Books > Professional & Technical > Professional Science > Evolution > Organic

More About the Author

I write books about science. Nature fascinates me, as does its history.

So far, I've written twelve books. My first book, At the Water's Edge (1999) followed scientists as they tackled two of the most intriguing evolutionary puzzles of all: how fish walked ashore, and how whales returned to the sea. It was followed in 2000 by Parasite Rex, in which I explore the bizarre world of nature's most successful life forms. In 2001 I published Evolution: The Triumph of An Idea, which was the companion volume to a PBS television series.

Soul Made Flesh, published in 2004, chronicled the dawn of neurology in the 1600s. The Sunday Telegraph calls it a "tour-de-force," and it was named a notable books of 2004 by the New York Times Book Review. In 2005, I published a short, richly illustrated introduction to the evolution our species, The Smithsonian Intimate Guide to Human Origins. Three years later I published Microcosm: E. coli and the New Science of Life. It is a biography of the best-studied creature on Earth. The Boston Globe called it "superb" and "quietly revolutionary."

To celebrate Darwin's 200th birthday in 2009, The Tangled Bank: An Introduction to Evolution. It is the first textbook about evolution intended for non-biology majors. The Quarterly Review of Biology called it "spectacularly successful."

In 2010 I branched out into e-books, publishing "Brain Cuttings: Fifteen Journeys Through the Mind." I followed up the next year with another collection, entitled (not surprisingly) "More Brain Cuttings: Further Journeys Through the Mind." In 2011 I also published two print books: A Planet of Viruses, and Science Ink: Tattoos of the Science Obsessed.

In addition to my books, I also write regularly about science for The New York Times, as well as for magazines including Time, Scientific American, National Geographic, Science, Newsweek, Natural History, and Discover, where I am a contributing editor. I've won awards for my work from the National Academies of Science and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. At Discover I write a monthly column about the brain and also write a blog called the Loom (blogs/discovermagazine.com/loom).

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

21 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A wonderous presentation of natures adaptations., December 11, 2000

By 

Stephen Marley (Northern California) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: At the Water's Edge : Fish with Fingers, Whales with Legs, and How Life Came Ashore but Then Went Back to Sea (Paperback)

Carl Zimmer brings the organizational skills of an experienced journalist and surprising literary talents to present an exquisite, up to date, narrative on the evolution of tetrapods, emerging from the water as amphibians and returning as cetaceans. In this book, he reports on the latest fossil discoveries, the prominent scientific researchers and the direction of their scientific analysis with style, and more importantly, great clarity. Some portions of At the Water's Edge are not easy for armchair paleo-buffs to comprehend, but Zimmer does an admirable job explaining the function of mesenchyme cells and hox genes. What I enjoyed most about this book, was the way Zimmer follows the trail of scientific discovery, documenting every bit of evidence, like a well-tuned detective novel. It's a compelling tale of interaction between paleontologist, geneticists, geologists and embryologists over many years. New fossil specimens demand a reworking of the evolutionary chronology. Our knowledge about the origins of tetrapods, our ancestral forbearers, is enhanced through the process of discovery. What I enjoyed most about Zimmer's work is the sense of objectivity and balance that comes from the third party perspective of a journalist. While Gould, Eldredge, Conway-Morris, Fortey and Bakker provide paleophiles books of great personal insight and passion, At the Water's Edge is completely satisfying in it's precise reportage. This is Zimmer's first book... I hope he's started another!

13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars "Everybody out of the Pond", February 5, 2005

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Michael Valdivielso (Alexandria, VA) - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)   

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This review is from: At the Water's Edge : Fish with Fingers, Whales with Legs, and How Life Came Ashore but Then Went Back to Sea (Paperback)

This book deals with two of the greatest transformations in natural history. The first part deals with how fish developed their body to live on land and the second explains how some mammals changed to go back and live in the water. The author explains how evolution, both micro and macro, works and gives us a tiny history of how Darwin's idea of natural selection changed how we thought about life on Earth.
The book not only tosses in a few new ideas, like early fish might of had both gills AND lungs, but but also shows how paletontolgy, ecology, genetics and embryology are being used to solve the secrets of macroevilution that biologists have been trying to uncover for centuries.
Carl Zimmer knows his stuff and knows how to explain it without confusing the readers.

12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Very readable, May 19, 2000

By 

Curt vandenHeuvel - See all my reviews

This review is from: At the Water's Edge : Fish with Fingers, Whales with Legs, and How Life Came Ashore but Then Went Back to Sea (Paperback)

It is unusual to describe a biology text as a real "page-turner", but Zimmer's book comes very close. It is an engrossing account of two of evolution's greatest transitions - from the water to the sea, and then, for some species, back to the sea once again.

The key to the success of this book is Zimmer's habit of taking the reader along on the dig. We follow Owen Gingerich to Pakistan and Egypt, where he finds hundreds of gargantuan whale-like Basilosaurus fossils in Zeuglodon Valley, and further discovers that they posess a very surprising feature - tiny little legs.

Follow Deaschler andd Rowe as they dig for tetrapod fossils, and discover a surprising number of fingers. Even when discussing such heady concepts as Hox genes and Sonic enzymes, Zimmer remains highly readable and entertaining.

The true test of a book lies in how it affects your outlook on life. In this case, I found myself keenly interested in the critters that inhabit our planet alongside us. With the hindsight afforded by a book such as this, we can see that the pattern of evolution is broadly stamped upon all of Nature's children.