The Eternal Trail: A Tracker Looks at Evolution [Paperback]

Martin Lockley (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 5, 2000

Were Jurassic dinosaurs social creatures? Can you determine the shape of a ram's horns from the evidence of its footprints? Paleontologist Martin Lockley answers these and other fascinating questions in this highly original tale of tracking and track making. Filled with fascinating anecdotes and surprising discoveries, The Eternal Trail initiates us into the art and science of tracking, while offering a poetic reflection on the continuity of life.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

A well-versed hunter or backwoods wanderer can tell the passage of a deer or elk herd by patterns of broken twigs, can guess at the age of a bear by the height of claw marks on a tree, can distinguish bird species by minute differences in their footprints and droppings. Tracks and signs reveal much about animals--and about humans. Martin Lockley, a paleontologist and dinosaur tracker, explores the hidden grammar of those signs in the Eternal Trail, a book full of wonders. Looking for evidence of Tyrannosaurus rex is one thing, of course; but who knew that archaeologists can tell Anglo-Saxons and Celts apart in ancient British sites by the shape of their footprints? Lockley uses such small variations among individuals, the cornerstone of Darwinian evolutionary theory, to explore the remarkable record of the past that lies on the ground all around us, accessible to anyone with keen eyes and a modicum of imagination. "What does it mean to look consciously backward and forward along the eternal trail and see ourselves in motion?" Lockley asks, having taken his readers through a vast catalog of examples. He answers by suggesting that we gain insight into the miracle of evolution across time, and that with this insight we better prepare ourselves to protect the natural world. It's a fine lesson, entertainingly delivered. --Gregory McNamee --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Publishers Weekly

Dinosaur footprints and other fossilized tracks are "the sheet music of the biosphere," writes University of Colorado geologist Lockley (Tracking Dinosaurs) in this uneven mix of science and mysticism. Lockley's professional expertise lies in interpreting fossilized traces and tracks; the best parts of this volume ably describe the process of drawing inferences from prints, fossil and otherwise. Were the odd tracks in South Korean rocks left by baby brontosaurs? Do Bigfoot's alleged tracks prove him (a) not a hoax and (b) a recently extinct giant ape? Lockley, guardedly, answers "yes" to all three questions. He also provides modest insight into the world's small community of trackersAthose scientists who study footprints. But readers expecting a short, reliable course in fossils and feet might be taken aback by the author's embrace of non-scientific beliefs. For Lockley, biological evolution has a spiritual goal, "hands and feet are the mirrors of the soul," and "we might infer from their foot shape that ancient Celts were more intuitive and mystical, whereas Saxons [were] more practical and down to earth." Lockley's overall thesis amounts to a decidedly non-Darwinian view of life: he believes that a "cyclic pattern of ascending and descending forces... characterize the growth cycle of all individuals, species, and larger groups," a pattern that points human beings toward "cosmic consciousness." Arguing for more research into palm-reading, he asks, "Why should minuscule genes tell us more about ourselves than our entire hands?" (Ask any geneticist.) Some readers will welcome Lockley's sincere (and well-footnoted) attempts to link his special skills to his spiritual hopes; others will deplore his refusal to distinguish between testable and untestable hypotheses, "biosphere and noosphere," paleontology, anthropology and religion. (Sept.)
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 352 pages
• Publisher: Basic Books (September 5, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0738203629
• ISBN-13: 978-0738203621
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,995,949 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars A mixed bag, January 3, 2001

By 

Duwayne Anderson (Saint Helens, Oregon) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Eternal Trail: A Tracker Looks At Evolution (Hardcover)

This book has some pretty interesting parts, but there is a lot of marginal material mixed in, and that tends to be a big distraction. I had a tough time getting through the introduction and first chapter, and nearly set the book aside for something else. The problem is that the first part of the book has lots of bad philosophy, and some bad science. For example, Lockley tells us in the introduction that

"... a mystical or intuitive approach to understanding existence is not incompatible with a scientific one."

He then explains how scientists sometimes find insights through intuition. He fails to illustrate, however, that (unlike mysticism) an essential element of the scientific method is independent, skeptical validation and review.

Lockley's personal penchants for things like palm reading are found at both the beginning and end of the book. For example, on page 22 he says:

"There is evidence that palms and hand shapes fall into various categories that reveal much of the character of the person. In palmistry an elongate hand is regarded as a sign of the gift of high intelligence, sensitivity, intuition, and psychic ability, whereas a stout hand, of the type sometimes called the square or useful hand, is a sign of a `salt of the earth' commonsense personality."

He makes the connection between palmistry and footprints by explaining how footprints reflect on the whole being. For example, he explains that Celtic feet tend to be longer and narrower than wide-footed Saxons, and that this can give insight into mental characteristics of these two groups of people. For example, on page 23, he writes:

"As we shall see, inherent qualities are also associated with narrowness and breadth, so we might infer from their foot shape that ancient Celts were more intuitive and mystical, whereas Saxons more practical and down to earth."

There are also some serious technical errors in the book. For example, on page 32 he says:

"In her seminal work Ho reiterates the known maxim that living organisms defy entropy, the tendency of systems to run down, by transcending the Second Law of Thermodynamics, which states that all inanimate matter decays to equilibrium or "heat death."

This is misleading and false. Living things do not posses some mystical capability to "transcend" the laws of thermodynamics. These laws apply to all matter, with no exceptions. Bogus arguments about thermodynamics are common among mythologists and creationist, and I was rather surprised and disappointed to find Lockley using some of them.

Fortunately the book improves once you get past the first part, with the rest of the book being mostly a discussion of fossil footprints down through the ages in a more or less chronological order. This was what I'd been looking for in the first place. It's just too bad that there's so much other stuff mixed in with what's actually a very interesting subject.

The story of the tracks begins almost at the beginning, with Trilobite pirouettes and worm trails from the Precambrian, along with some quite interesting discussions about tracks left by monster millipedes and the earliest land animals. Once again, however, Lockley makes a serious technical error, when, on page 53 he says:

"It is fun to suggest that these ancestors of wood lice were stunned by the sheer enormity of their pioneering explorations on land. Dazed by sudden exposure to atmospheric pressure, they were still finding their land legs."

At first, I thought Lockley must have been joking, but he later describes discussing (in apparent seriousness) this very idea with a class of students. Any physicist will realize that atmospheric pressure is felt below the surface of a lake, just as it is right above the surface. The pressure increases below water, but in a continuous way. The first organisms to leave the seas had lots of things with which to contend, but a sudden change in pressure (assuming they were not deep-water organisms) was not one of them. And while Lockley seems to think that animals emerging from the sea would have been suddenly exposed to an increase in pressure, the opposite is actually the case. The total pressure under water is higher than the atmospheric pressure at the surface.

A good part of the rest of the book consists of examples of track ways, including some interesting personal stories about famous tracks that have been found and preserved. There is a nice discussion about phantom tracks that occur when a footprint is transferred to layers below the one on which the animal trod (sort of like making a carbon copy) and some very interesting accounts of footprints from the Holocene and Pleistocene - including horses and camels. One of the most interesting parts of the book is the section that deals with footprints of our earliest ancestors.

Throughout the book are examples of the author's belief that footprints exhibit clues about the whole animal, including such things as similarities between the shapes of hoofs and the shapes of horns. I find this interesting, and entirely plausible, but I wish the author had provided a more secure scientific basis for the claim. He frequently draws comparisons with a relatively small set of animals, for which the conclusions all hold quite nicely, but he fails to provide a more complete basis for drawing general conclusions.

When Lockley sticks with the subject of tracking and footprints he can be very engaging and quite informative. But he injects his personal philosophy so often that I found it distracting - especially when he starts making erroneous statements about atmospheric pressure and the laws of thermodynamics. Still, I'm glad I took the time to read his book. It made me think, and it taught me some things I didn't know before.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars baghhhh., March 17, 2007

By 

Paul Bridges (California) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Eternal Trail: A Tracker Looks At Evolution (Hardcover)

Somebody gave me this book, since I'm an amateur tracker; I doubt I'd have bought it if I read the reviews. Parts of it were truly delightful, I admit, but I got a stomach-ache everytime I read some sort of pseudo-science or bastardization of actual science. When factual claims are made that contradict what we know is true (I won't repeat the other reviewers' comments), or are made without evidence or reliable references, I can't trust anything else the author says. It's a shame, because, for example I suspect the relation between foot shape and being "down to earth" is bunk (in lieu of carefully controlled studies to verify this), there *has* been a recent study showing a correlation between index/ring finger length ratio and the subject's sexual orientation or athletic ability. But, as with most pseudo-science, such actual science is disregarded in favor of wishful thinking.

6 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars PONDERINGS OF A WORLD-CLASS TRACKER!, December 16, 1999

By 

Ray D. Stanford (College Park, MD United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Eternal Trail: A Tracker Looks At Evolution (Hardcover)

THE ETERNAL TRAIL is an important, informative, and exciting read. For years, Martin Lockley's works have played an indispensible role, pioneering in and the sharing of track studies with scientists and the world at large. Now, in THE ETERNAL TRAIL, we learn how this has lead him to deep thought about the nature of life, evolution, and even the forms which life takes. In sharing his facinating thoughts and insights, one perceives commendable courage. Some hounds of late 20th-century materialism may howl well past midnight because a scientist and educator of Lockley's caliber has dared to suggest that maybe we do not encompass the deeper modus of evolution by viewing it as only a result of natural selection manifesting in punctuated equilibrium. Of course, Lockley does not pretend to understand evolution, suggesting only that we may benefit by studing similarities in diverse forms that may have something to tell us. Commendably candid, LOCKLEY IS WILLING TO THINK OUT LOUD, unashamed to question, declaring at least the incompleteness of present evolutionary theory. Indeed, his personal exploration of both the broader and the deeper implications of 'the eternal trail', reflect an appropriate, rather cosmic perspective befitting an age where 'quantum teleportation'and other such wonders are now being discussed. Over past years Lockley has played a major (maybe THE major) role in transforming track studies (paleo-ichnology) from a mere scientific sideline, into a world-wide and world-class scientific endeavor involving geology, biology, paleo-ecology, and other disciplines. THE ETERNAL TRAIL is a continuation of that progress, challenging each of us to a broader playing field. Definitely a read that should not be missed by persons interested in evolution, the philosophy of science, pondering the nature of reality, paleo-ichnology in general, reading the 'signs' of nature or, well, dinosaurs, for that matter!