A review by errogal
Wonderful Life: The Burgess Shale and the Nature of History by Stephen Jay Gould

5.0

Everyone interested in science should read Gould's Wonderful Life. It was an extremely enlightening, detailed read about the finding of the Burgess Shale lagerstatten - and the bizarre creatures found within it. It's hard to imagine creatures such as the hallucigenia, anomalicaris, and the wiwaxia ever existed - yet they did - and it's only luck of the draw that they don't still exist today. The last few pages about the first chordate (the Pikaia) were absolutely mind-blowing. This book should be required reading for geology, biology, and marine science students - as it provides an incredible overview of an extremely rare event in the history of the earth.