Customer Reviews

Gorgon: Paleontology, Obsession, and the Greatest Catastrophe in Earth's History

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1 star:		(2)

 

 

Today's schoolchildren, fascinated by Jurassic creatures, learn that the dinosaurs were mostly wiped out by a meteor that struck the area of the Yucatan 65 million years ago. This explanation was put forward only a couple of decades ago, and though it was revolutionary at the time, it has been confirmed so well that it is hard to imagine that there will ever be evidence to disconfirm it. Peter D. Ward, now a professor of geological sciences at the University of Washington, worked on evidence for this Cretaceous extinction, and then turned his attention to a previous extinction, one that makes the Cretaceous look like a fender-bender. In _Gorgon: Paleontology, Obsession, and the Greatest Catastrophe in Earth's History_ (Viking), Ward has told the story of his researches into the Permian extinction, which 250 million years ago exterminated forever 95% of the species then living. This is a personal account, a memoir to tell about field adventures, the atmosphere in modern South Africa, and the theory he has come up with. It is a fine introduction to current ideas about the Permian extinction, and what it is that paleontologists do.

The Gorgon of the title was a beast something like a tiger, ten feet long. The fearsome Gorgon was not a mammal; it had eyes at the side of its head and it had scales on its body, both characteristics more associated with lizard-type creatures. And the Gorgon itself left no descendants. It was one of the victims of the Permian wipeout. Ward was in South Africa in 1991 to research another type of fossil, but circumstances sent him into the heat, cold, storms, flies, ticks, snakes, ants, and scorpions of the Karoo desert. The stratification there, and other evidence, brought fundamental changes in the way paleontologists view the Permian extinction. The eventual explanation includes that there was not a single, rapid event, but a series of short, successive ones altering the atmosphere and changing the population of creatures that could survive to beget the dinosaurs and mammals that were to come. The explanation isn't final; no scientific explanation really is, but it is how things stand right now.

In addition to being a scientific memoir, Ward's book describes visits to South Africa when that country was going through amazing changes. On one visit, he was interrogated by severe and unfriendly white passport controllers, for instance, whereas years later he would be greeted by welcoming black ones. He would also visit during times where he could show his white self anywhere with impunity, whereas years later to be white "meant that one had money and was fair game." He was informed on a later visit to avoid a certain region because it was Thursday; seeking clarification, he learned that Thursday was cremation day. AIDS had come, and he was being advised not to be downwind of the burning of the week's accumulated bodies. Also, Ward is open about the effect of his career on his family, which he obviously loves, but he loves his travel to the field as well. Leaving them again for Africa, he can't find words to explain why the hunt is so important for him, and the parting becomes an unsweet sorrow, even an angry one. "Why do we do what we do?" he asks. It is a great question. He has answered the scientific questions as directly as he can, and in his report of struggling to overcome many physical, emotional, and societal hurdles to find answers, he has given an indirect but satisfying answer to his personal why.

Peter Ward writes of gorgons, the Permian extinction, and life as a paleontologist.

It is an interesting read, and there is a lot in here that's worth your time and money. I found some bits of it fascinating (especially his accounts of what it's like in the field). My problem was that I was expecting a book about gorgons. About what science knows (or hypothesizes) about the gorgon. In fact, most of the book doesn't mention the gorgon at all. And only a little is used to explain different ideas regarding the Permian extinction (with very little evidence being offered for Ward's views).

If you're looking to learn more about the gorgon - this isn't the books for you. If you're looking to learn more about the Permian extinction, this isn't the book for you.

If you're looking for an entertaining read about the process of field paleontology, about the experiences of doing work in a foreign country, then you should pick this up.

First, let's have a big groan for Viking's uninformed jacket copy editor, who in the photo credits calls the gorgonopsian on the front cover a "dinosaur." I trust they'll fix that for the paperback edition.

I enjoyed and reviewed Dr. Ward's book _Rare Earth_, so I know he is capable of producing rewarding science writing for the educated layman. But as I progressed through this book, I was a bit disappointed to realize that it was mostly about himself. His is an interesting story, but the actual science content of the book could be told in the space of an article in Discover magazine.

The writing is gratingly overwrought much of the time, and the intensely personal nature of some of it is discomfiting. He keeps going on about the taciturnity of his South African colleague Roger Smith, apparently not thinking that it might be a reaction to Ward's stereotypically American puppy-dog gregariousness. The purplish prose works effectively in the first few scenes of field work in the Karoo, though; when the extreme conditions call for descriptive passages to match.

As he and the reader slog on, the scientific data slowly accumulate. The crew is bedeviled by human error and bad luck, on top of the hostile conditions. For instance, after one grueling expedition is finally wrapped up, the rock samples are ruined in a lab accident, necessitating a return trip to the South African wilderness. But eventually enough dots are connected for Ward to venture a hypothesis about the nature of the Permian/Triassic extinction, and about mass extinctions in general.

So, does his evidence add up? You can skip most of the book and just read the last chapter, and judge for yourself. Or you can read the whole thing, and get an idea of the travails of field paleontology, a much more detailed idea than you ever might have wanted.

The author was a bit self indulgent in his personal observations (I could do without the mudwrestling) but there is some good stuff here too. I learned something about the Permian extinction, the geology of South Africa, and some of the techniques in the modern paleontologist's toolbox. I learned more than I needed to about the life of this particular paleontologist in the field, but so be it. An easy and informative read.

Like David Read (see review September 20, 2004) I rather thought that this book would be about the Gorgons and other creatures of that period in Earth's history. However, caveat emptor, I guess.

Nonetheless, the book gets off to an enthusiastic start and, once you have realised what the thrust of it is, it's actually is quite compelling reading for quite a large part. He paints a vivid picture of the bleakness of the South African Karoo and the trials and tribulations of fossil hunting. As someone who did Geology at university, specialising in palaeontology, I had a
few wry grins whilst reading his narrative.

However, the book really starts going off the boil somewhere in the second half, and really fizzles out by the end. It's not that there are no conclusions drawn, but the early pace of the
book just dies. It seems to me that this may be for several reasons.

Firstly, one can't help feeling that he approached the whole subject of the Permian extinction in the expectation that
is would be explained by a single catastrophic event as in the case of the K/T extinction. After all, he considers the scale of the Permian extinction to be greater than that of the later one. When this proved not to be the case, he seems to have been rather disappointed. It seems to me that a combination of this realisation, drudgery in the Karoo over more than a decade, a failure to be the main man who "came up with the solution" to the extinction, and just simply getting older (happens to all of us), blunted his enthusiasm for the whole thing. By the end the feeling one gets its that he isn't really all that bothered about it all, and just finished the book because, having started it, it had to be completed.

All rather a pity really, given that he is quite capable of writing in a captivating way when he puts his mind to it. For those who haven't done so, I recommend reading "Rare Earth" which
he wrote together with Donald Brownlee.

I wans't sure whther to give this a 3 or 4 start rating - I would say 4 for readability, but 3 for having a misleading title.

This book caught my eye while browsing in a bookstore. The cover is quite striking, with a subtitle reminiscent of Indiana Jones, "Paleontology, Obsession, and the Greatest Catastrophe in Earth's History" The fact that I dropped $30 on the spot to buy it is proof that a good cover is a great marketing device. I learned a thing or two from this book. In fact, the first three paragraphs in the prologue of my book use information that came straight from this one.

I was surprised to find that the animals populating the planet just prior to the Permian extinction event were "mammal-like reptiles." Keep in mind, this is many millions of years before dinosaurs appeared. Some theories as to what caused this event are tossed about, with the author presenting a few theories of his own. In a nutshell, this book is a collection of facts and conjecture about the Permian extinction event interspersed with the author's experiences while hunting for information pertaining to this event in the Karoo Desert of South Africa.

I could not shake the feeling that the book had been fluffed up at the insistence of some editor in an attempt to make it more exciting. Here is an excerpt where the author lets his hair down describing the time he was mugged in Cape Town:

"They could have the money, but not the watch, or so went the instant balance of decision making, and luckily for me there was no knife, or perhaps they simply chose not to use it; on such fulcrums does fate balance. "No!" I yelled, and some new drive kicked in; I rolled, smashed one in the head with my fist, and was up now, years in the gym repaying their debt."

He then ran away, eventually tripping over a low fence. Another time, we see the "F" word used three times in a row as his partner has a tantrum about lost keys. If that is not enough, the author decides to try it out for himself, "F... that," says the professor of paleontology in a later chapter for no apparent reason.

The following describes a scene where he is leaving his young son in Seattle to return to South Africa yet again:

"... clutching my leg, "Daddy don't go." I shook him off as gently as I could, but there is no gentleness in this sort of leaving, only scars, scars that come back to haunt us in the dark of night when sleep mocks and we take the measure of our lives. Why do we do what we do?"

I'll take a shot at answering that question: to gain a measure of status among your peers in the fiercely hierarchical world of academia? I was impressed by just how far some members of academia will go to make their mark; ten years wondering around in the baking hot deserts of South Africa looking for fossils does not strike me as being the least bit romantic. It is a stark, desolate place and his time spent there seemed surprisingly devoid of interesting experiences, barely enough to flush out the 236 pages of this book.

I think this book would have been better off without the attempts to add drama and adventure. Writing a book is hard work, and I hate to be critical of another author's efforts. Keep in mind that reviews are just personal opinions. The other reviews appear to be quite positive, so please, take my remarks with a grain of salt. I tend to be overly critical by nature.

Peter Ward's "Gorgon: Paleontology, Obsession, and the Greatest Catastrophe in Earth's History" is a very interesting read. It takes a bit to get going, and the ending seems rushed, but it remains informative and entertaining throughout.

Peter Ward has a long professional association with mass extinctions, as his many previous books will attest. "Gorgon" opens with definitive statements about the conclusiveness of research intended to show that an extraterrestrial impact wiped out the nonavian dinosaurs 65 million years ago; those who feel that there are still some points to be debated about this interpretation will find nothing here, for Ward is absolute in his convictions. And this adamant stance is his jumping-off point for the rest of the book, as he views the terminal Permian extinction through the lens of his views on the Cretaceous event.

"Gorgon" seems a bit of a departure from many of Ward's earlier books. While details of the science read well and are clearly and often engagingly presented, the science does seem a bit thin. This is surprising, given the amount of work that has been conducted regarding the colossal extinction pulse at the end of the Permian. Fortunately, what Ward uses to fill the gaps is more personal, thoughtful and introspective than a strict presentation of scientific theories might otherwise permit. I felt that he beautifully captured the joys and the hardships of paleontological field work, from the desperate need to focus when prospecting, to the primitive yet often idyllic field and camp locales, to the kinship (and infrequent conflict) one feels with one's field mates, to the adrenaline rush when one discovers a significant new find.

As for the science itself, it too seems well presented. The reader will see what Ward and his colleagues observed in the Karoo region of South Africa, and will be led to understand its significance in the discussion of the Permian extinction. I personally would have preferred additional photographs, maps, and diagrams to supplement the text, but that's just me.

I'm giving the book four stars rather than five because I felt that the conclusion of the volume seemed rushed. Chapter 11, for example, discussed the conclusions and subsequent challenges to the hypothesis that an extraterrestrial impact caused the Permian extinction. The chapter ended with a paragraph stating, "By the year 2000 it was generally accepted that ... an impact *did* occur, some 250 million years ago ... [t]he question that remained ... was whether or not this fiery messenger from space was the sole assassin." Chapter 12 discussed the Permian extinction as being fast and occurring in pulses. Chapter 13 then discussed Ward's own newly-advanced interpretations, which do not involve any sort of extraterrestrial impact (and which it would be unfair of me to present here; if you want to know what Ward thinks, read the book!). [As a side note, there are implications of Ward's interpretations regarding the evolution of dinosaurs and birds that are fascinating to consider, but which he leaves frustratingly defleshed -- building up to his point, then abruptly ending the chapter. I do wish he'd extrapolated a bit more.] Finally, the Epilogue then stated, "I now believe that the Permian extinction yields but a single important lesson: Planets with higher life ... *can be rendered abiotic*, and that asteroid impact can certainly do the job." So we're taken from extraterrestrial impact being part or all of the cause of the Permian extinction, to such an impact being unnecessary to explain the extinction, then right back to the Permian teaching us that asteroids can cause mass extinctions. If that sounds confused, it's because it is. I wonder if there was a publication deadline involved, as the writing seems to betray some haste here. I felt that the conclusion of the book would have been more satisfying, and the book itself more thoroughly enjoyable, had Ward and his editors spend a little more time on the last few chapters. Maybe I'm misreading things, but that's how it appears to me after several re-readings.

In all, then, an entertaining and informative read, with insights and expressions of personal feelings that stand out from Ward's earlier works, and with a conclusion that leaves one wanting more. The flaws are minor, and the book is well worth reading. I strongly recommend it.

I used to do a bit of Fossil Hunting about 30 years ago and read a fair bit about fossils and the Fossil Record. Most of what I did was searching for Belemnites,shark teeth,and hopefully some bones in Cretaceous marl and an adjacent stream bed in New Jersey.At that time there were great discussions going on as to what caused the great extinction of the huge creatures that roamed the earth.The Cretaceous Period was 60-120 million years ago. I can't recall any discussions about creatures the size of lions roaming around 250 million years ago called Gorgons;and a possible extinction at the end of the Permian Period. So,when I saw this book ,I figured it would make interesting reading.
As other reviewers have already stated,the book is pretty short on data and provides very little proof. However,it is well worth reading for anyone who has ever searched for fossils and all the mud,muck,heat,cold,wet and just plain hard dirty work that is involved. However,the rewards come when your hunches or bull work pay off;and you find something good.What a thrill it is, when you unearth a fossil and realize that this thing lived over 100 million years ago and has been waiting there for you to find.
I found this book to be a great read and shows how people can devote years of their lives pursuing an interest or obsession.
It is well written and the author reveals himself and his associates ;and I think that is more what one should look for in this book ; rather than the answer;because the search will continue and the theories will be put forward and debated as long as there are people with the desire to find those answers.Just imagine,if every question could be answered,what a dull world it would be.The excitement of the journey often surpasses the destination.

Gorgon is a book much as one expects from Peter Ward, a multi faceted examination of what it takes to be a paleontologist, of what approach answers questions in paleontology, of what the evidence tells us, all mixed with the adventure of a life lived often in the field in a foreign culture. The book is therefore an excellent introduction for the young person with an interest in geology, earth history, or paleontology as a career, or for the individual of whatever age who is interested in the subject but has difficulty with the dry facts of science as generally presented in books and journals on the topic.

While I personally like to take my information "straight up" like those he composes with co-author Donald Brownlee, and without the biographical admixture of adventure, I did find the sociological information about South Africa very enlightening and enjoyed it. I am also once agained reconfirmed in my belief that the life of a field geologist is a rigorous one. More than anything, I now realize how very unsuited I would have been as either a geologist or a paleontologist. I enjoy having worked on my degree in geology, but I really am an armchair enthusiast.

I found the author's late realization of the clues inherent to the red beds surprising, since their significance occurred to me almost immediately. This may possibly be because I live in the once iron rich state of Minnesota and the oxidation of iron in solution in the oceans that formed those beds was made quite clear in my own geology classes.

Among the findings that the author offered at the conclusion of the book, several were of interest to me. He suggests that the common finds of Lystrosaur may not be due to simple accident of preservation but reflect the fact that they were a common post Permian animal. Perhaps the Lystrosaurs had made it successfully through the bottleneck to increase in numbers at the expense of those who failed to survive whatever catastrophe had occurred.

The author also mentions that this animal had been known as a high altitude creature, successful where others were not by virtue of its specialized lungs. This led him to wonder if the common finding the the Lystrosaur might reflect a depletion of oxygen level and a movement of the animal into lower altitudes as competitors died out. He also opines the likelihood that the dinosaur and its relatives the birds became successful by virtue of similar lung changes accommodating lower oxygen levels early on, a very insightful proposal.

The notion that all these changes might have set life on a totally different pathway, one that ultimately led to us, is also quite clever. I know that others have suggested atmospheric oxygen content changes as an explanation for the size increase in animal life during the Jurassic, but this was suggested as an increase in content rather a decrease. Another decline in oxygen level, this time to our current level of 21%, has been proposed for the extinction of the megafauna of the Pleistocene. Clearly any major change in the proportion of atmospheric gases is going to effect any life that has accommodated itself to a narrowly defined set of conditions. Animals that are more tolerant of deprivation or have a wider tolerance for variation will out compete those that don't. Given the pressures to which our present atmosphere is subject, whether by natural climate change or the effects of green house gases from fossel fuels and ozone depleters, it may not be too long before anaerobes come into their own again!

By now, almost everyone must be familiar with the discovery of the iridium concentrations at the K-T (Cretaceous-Tertiary) boundary, and the Chicxulub impact crater, first reported in 1981, that appears to exactly the right age and the right size to have terminated most of the life on Earth, sixty-five million years ago. The author of "Gorgon" began his career with field work on the proof of the quick and terrible extinction at the K-T boundary--the death knell of the dinosaurs.

However, Dr. Ward found himself more and more intrigued by an even great extinction event that occurred 250 million years ago at the boundary of the Permian and the Triassic (P/T). Was it caused by another comet or meteor strike? Did the elimination of 95 % of Earth's marine life and 70% of all land species proceed as quickly as at the K-T termination, or did it take place in pulses over a much longer period of time?

According to the author (and others), there is no credible, unambiguous evidence for an impact as is the case for the K-T extinction. What is more likely is that massive greenhouse gas emissions reduced oxygen availability, ultimately resulting in the collapse of marine ecosystems, and most of the land-based systems as well. This was possibly caused by volcanic eruptions on the supercontinent of Pangea, in what is now Siberia (the Siberian Traps).

In the final chapter of his book, "Resolution," the author puts forth two interesting observation-based theories: (1) the abundance of oxidized, reddish rock in the Triassic beds above the P/T boundary (about 50 million years worth) implies "...the oxygen in our atmosphere plunged to very low levels as it became tied up in the rocks...so low, in fact, that any poor human...would very quickly suffer from altitude sickness, even at sea level."; (2) on land at least, the near extinction of animals that didn't use oxygen efficiently, including most but not all of the mammal-like reptiles that dominated the Permian. "Heat [greenhouse effect] and asphyxiation [were] the two agents of the long mysterious mass extinction."

Except for the last chapter, "Gorgon" is light on theory and heavy on field work and proof-of-concept. Here is how geologists, paleontologists, and other scientists interact in the field, braving the heat of South Africa's Karoo Desert, the omnipresent ticks, flies, and puff adders, and the digestive challenges of bad water and mystery-meat pizza. Dr. Ward takes his readers not only on a trip through the lost world of the Permian, but also through an African culture that seems to be on the brink of chaos. He is a sensitive and at times acerbic observer of both present and deep past. "Gorgon" is a compelling, thoroughly readable story.