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Monkey's Voyage: How Improbable Journeys Shaped The History Of Life (2014)

by Alan de Queiroz(Favorite Author)

3.78 of 5 Votes: 5

ISBN

1306310296 (ISBN13: 9781306310291)

languge

English

genre

History & Biography

publisher

Basic Books (AZ)

review 1: A engagingly written discussion of the debate about whether the evidence favors vicariance or long distance dispersal as the explanation for the distribution of living things around the world.There may indeed have been some cases of vicariance, in which an ancient species was separated by continental drift and subsequently evolved into separate modern species. But de Queiroz makes a convincing argument that this is actually a more rare occurrence than the seemingly improbable voyages of plants and animals across vast expanses of ocean to populate remote islands.While there have always, since Darwin, been people who believed in the possibility of long distance journeys, the weight of consensus has swung back and forth over the years. The recent decisive factor that de Que... moreiroz argues has settled the case is the possibility of molecular dating of DNA. This shows that, for example, the species that populate Hawaii have evolutionarily separated from their related mainland populations as recently as 20 million years ago, not 70 million as would have to be the case for the islands to have been close enough to ant continent for normal (short distance) dispersal.There is quite a bit of scientist vs. scientist debate discussed here, with competing theories spelled out and then refuted, I suppose to add the element of human drama to the book, but for me that part got a little tedious, and was less interesting and relevant than the actual evidence presented. One of the most interesting things I learned from this book was the concept of the "how-possibly explanation" originated by an obscure philosopher of history named William Dray. It's a series of arguments aimed at overcoming the incredulity of the audience, so that in the end it's been demonstrated that a particular event was clearly not impossible, even though it may not have been probable, and may not have happened in exactly the suggested way.Glad I read this one, recommended.
review 2: This book had much less monkey than I was expecting. The monkey doesn't appear until 200+ pages into the book. Then the bomb drops, a small bomb IMO. Our family of monkey likes to take cruises. As do many other animals. The big point her is that the earth is rediculously old. The evolution of its life forms takes time and includes many extinctions. The second big point is that maybe the crust plates shifting separated animal species, but those animals are extinct and the surviving species are not necessarily on the same place. These animals have the ability, albeit rare, to disperse across large bodies of water and populate far away continents.This is his story behind the monkey. A short story. One that explains why there are different types of monkeys in the the new world vs the old world. Monkeys with different traits. Monkeys that didn't exist when the plates initially shifted. Cool stuff, skimmed parts just to get to the juicy parts. Nice writing style. less

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