Time Frames [Paperback]

Niles Eldredge (Author)

Product Details

• Paperback: 240 pages
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster; 1st edition (June 1986)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0671622455
• ISBN-13: 978-0671622459
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,859,364 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars researching the history of evolution, May 19, 2002

By 

Currahee (South Mississippi) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Time Frames (Paperback)

Dr. Eldredge is a curator of paleontology at the American Museum of Natural History. He and Dr. Stephen J Gould developed what may be the most critical appendix to Darwin's theory of evolution through natural selection since Ernst Mayr's biological species concept. In short the theory of punctuated equilibria states that species are in evolutionary stasis for long periods of time and when a useful adaptation appears it will spread rapidly through the population. It is not the theory that makes this book a good read. It is the way that the author describes how he and Dr. Gould came to it. Dr. Eldredge is an expert on trilobites, a group of aquatic arthropods that went extinct before the dinosaurs appeared. Following him as he explorers the fossil record of these creatures is as much a lesson in perseverance and good science as it is in evolutionary theory. I would recommend this book to anyone interested in any field of organismal biology, it would be a "must read" for people who are particularly interested in evolution and or paleontology.