Planet Ocean: A Story of Life, the Sea and Dancing to the Fossil Record [Paperback]

Ray Troll (Author), Bradford Matsen (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 1, 1995

This is the paperback edition of the great pop-paleontology book with the fabulous art that inspired a show that toured the nation's natural history museums. In its own way it has inspired many people to take a new look at the fossil record and imagine creatures and things as they might have been—a blend of word and image unlike any other.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

An irreverent trip through four billion years of evolution, this freewheeling excursion combines swaths of paleontology, geology and natural history, travel notes and amateur fieldwork from Kansas to British Columbia, amplified by wacky cartoons and colorful, often fantastical mixed-media drawings. Matsen and Troll, who collaborated on Shocking Fish Tales , emphasize that we are descended from fish that came ashore some 375 million years ago, giving rise to land-dwelling vertebrates. Evolution emerges here as a series of mass extinctions, improbable survivals, false starts and unsolved enigmas. Although their jocularity often impedes the narrative, Matsen and Troll bring a sense of awe and excitement to an informative, magical tour that is a lot more fun to read than standard texts and responsibly covers current scientific controversies.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

Offering a combination of evolution and paleontology with a large dose of extinction, the authors state that "650 million years ago, give or take a few million years, the sea was mother and father to us all" and that we all have a vertebrate in common from the Pikaia, a walking fish. They thus poke some fun at both creationists and evolutionists. Their writing is clear and entertaining, and the illustrations are similar to their earlier Shocking Fish Tales (Ten Speed Pr., 1993), but Planet Ocean has more variety. Unfortunately, the layout of the illustrations sometimes interrupts the text. Interesting and appealing aesthetically, this book is nevertheless hard to place. The illustrations are art, while the text is closer to science. For larger collections with an interest in current evolutionary theory for the lay reader.
Jean E. Crampon, Hancock Biology & Oceanography Lib., Univ. of Southern California, Los Angeles
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 144 pages
• Publisher: Ten Speed Press (June 1, 1995)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0898157781
• ISBN-13: 978-0898157789
• Product Dimensions: 10 x 0.4 x 10.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.5 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,103,440 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Brad Matsen has been writing about wonders of the sea for forty years. He is the author of Death and Oil: A True Story of the Piper Alpha Disaster on the North Sea; Jacques Cousteau: The Sea King; Titanic's Last Secrets; Descent: The Heroic Discovery of the Abyss, which was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize in 2006; the New York Times bestseller Titanic's Last Secrets; Planet Ocean: A Story of Life the Sea, and Dancing to the Fossil Record with artist Ray Troll; the award-winning Incredible Ocean Adventure series for children; and many other books. He was creative producer for the Shape of Life, an eight-hour National Geographic television series on evolutionary biology, and has written on marine science and the environment for Mother Jones, Audubon, Natural History, and other magazines.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A beautiful, well-written view of past life in the ocean!, June 24, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: Planet Ocean: A Story of Life, the Sea, and Dancing to the Fossil Record (Hardcover)

This book was a pleasure to read- even though it was mostly facts (and this is coming from a teenager)! Sure, I love learning about evolution and fossils, but I rarely sit down to read long, boring books about it. But this book is fresh, colorful, full of information, and INTERESTING!!! I congratulate the author and illustrator for putting out such a masterpiece! It is sure to recruit paleontologists for the next generation!

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A story of life, the sea...fossils...Planet Earth!, July 22, 2006

By 

Lee Say Keng "KNOWLEDGE ADVENTURER/TECHNOLOGY... (Ho Chi Minh City/Singapore) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Planet Ocean: A Story of Life, the Sea and Dancing to the Fossil Record (Paperback)

I bought this book essentially to serve as additional curriculum support to my 'Science & The Art of Discovery' workshop designed for kids, 8-12. I have kept it in the office library where the kids can have ready access.

Participating kids often like to take out the book to browse. I often find them transfixed with awe.

The book is a wonderful visual & intellectual treat. The printed text integrates natural history, paleontology, geology, & biology into a wholistic narrative about the origins of all life on earth.

I like to conclude this review with a quotation from the book: "We shall not cease from exploration. And the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started. And know the place for the first time. (T S Elliot, 'Four Quartets')"

I would enthusiastically recommend this entertaining book to your kids, particularly when they have an interest in science.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars As good as palaeontology gets! Sagan would be proud! A+, February 15, 2005

By 

Robert A Felthousen - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Planet Ocean: A Story of Life, the Sea and Dancing to the Fossil Record (Paperback)

The late Carl Sagan thought that science should be "user-friendly," presented not in jargon but in regular English. He believed that the general public could -- and should -- have access to the latest scientific discoveries.

Sagan would be proud of _Planet Ocean._ The central theme of the book is stated clearly on page 1: "Nature is a workshop, not a temple." Matsen spends the rest of the book supporting this concept, explaining that life is not a stately, well-executed design where species climb a ladder of progress; rather, evolution is an inescapable and completely random condition. Animals and plants breed, have offspring that are slightly different, and continue to become slightly more different with each successive generation until the distant grandkids look nothing like the original parent. In addition, through totally weird, sometimes avoidable and sometimes unavoidable circumstances, the species as a whole will either do very well, or get pushed out of the scene. The environment works like the stock market -- fortunes are made, and fortunes are lost. (The metaphor of "rolling the dice" comes up more than once.)

Matsen's prose is engaging, entertaining, and extremely informative. In one of my favorite sections, he describes the success of the trilobites (who survived for 300 million years in Earth's oceans):

"They would eat anything and breed anywhere, and they made themselves as unattractive to predators as possible. We all have relatives like them. From [trilobites] and their success and longevity, an evolutionary rule of thumb has emerged: 'The more specialized a species, the less able to cope with change it will be once the inevitable happens and old habitats change beyond the point of recognition' [...]. In other words, generalists usually outlast specialists, and evolutionary progress is not necessarily a matter of refinement. [...] Ninety percent of success is just showing up. Ask an arthropod, like a trilobite or a cockroach. [...] Generalism won't get you to Carnegie Hall with your cello, but a cockroach doesn't need a cello." (p. 14).

This conversational tone is used throughout the book, and it really works. Matsen's prose reminds one of an after-class discussion with a very generous, patient biology teacher -- the kind you always wished you had, and didn't. Matsen takes otherwise very difficult subject matter and explains it in understandable terms that don't insult the intelligence of the reader. He even suggests amusing mnemonics to remember the order of epochs in the Palaezoic and Mesozoic eras ("Crying over sleeping dragons may puzzle people, terrify, (or) joyfully convert") as well as for the Cenozoic era ("Palaeontologists eat only murky plankton porridge hot").

Interwoven with the education that Matsen offers is the story of his and artist Ray Troll's voyage of discovery. Brad and Ray actually travelled to many of the sites discussed in the book, and the little personal touches -- Brad's vision of the Cretacious sea as they drove across Kansas, Ray's discovery and naming of a totally new species of pterasaur, and the fishing trips enjoyed by both -- really draw in the reader. One becomes intimate with the friendly voice, the casual, personal stories, and history of life on Earth.

Not to be missed, of course, is the wonderful art. Ray Troll is a meticulous artist, and his offbeat sense of humor is perfectly in place with the spirit of the book. For example, his illustration of a lungfish's hesitant voyage out of water is captioned, "Out of the ooze and born to cruise." Not to be missed are his "ads" for a wrist watch that measures geologic time; Burgess Brand Primordial Soup; and that great French wine, Chateau Mosasaur. Doodles, sketches, and highly detailed pastel paintings are strewn throughout, and they are worth the price of the book by themselves. (Interested readers can preview some of Ray's art at his homepage, www.trollart.com)

This book is an excellent introduction to evolution, palaeontology, marine biology, and/or marine science. Alternately light and serious, one is sorry to finish the book. It -- like the 650 million year history it encapsulates -- is such a joy to experience. Highly recommended.