Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Unavailable
    Across the Bridge: Understanding the Origin of the Vertebrates
    Unavailable
    Across the Bridge: Understanding the Origin of the Vertebrates
    Unavailable
    Across the Bridge: Understanding the Origin of the Vertebrates
    Ebook522 pages4 hours

    Across the Bridge: Understanding the Origin of the Vertebrates

    By Henry Gee

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    Our understanding of vertebrate origins and the backbone of human history evolves with each new fossil find and DNA map. Many species have now had their genomes sequenced, and molecular techniques allow genetic inspection of even non-model organisms. But as longtime Nature editor Henry Gee argues in Across the Bridge, despite these giant strides and our deepening understanding of how vertebrates fit into the tree of life, the morphological chasm between vertebrates and invertebrates remains vast and enigmatic.

    As Gee shows, even as scientific advances have falsified a variety of theories linking these groups, the extant relatives of vertebrates are too few for effective genetic analysis. Moreover, the more we learn about the species that do remain—from sea-squirts to starfish—the clearer it becomes that they are too far evolved along their own courses to be of much use in reconstructing what the latest invertebrate ancestors of vertebrates looked like. Fossils present yet further problems of interpretation. Tracing both the fast-changing science that has helped illuminate the intricacies of vertebrate evolution as well as the limits of that science, Across the Bridge helps us to see how far the field has come in crossing the invertebrate-to-vertebrate divide—and how far we still have to go.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherUniversity of Chicago Press
    Release dateJul 4, 2018
    ISBN9780226403199
    Unavailable
    Across the Bridge: Understanding the Origin of the Vertebrates
    Author

    Henry Gee

    Dr Henry Gee was born in 1962. He was educated at the universities of Leeds and Cambridge. For more than three decades he has been a writer and editor at the international science journal Nature. His previous books include The Accidental Species: Misunderstandings of Human Evolution; Across The Bridge: Understanding the Origin of the Vertebrates; Deep Time: Cladistics, the Revolution in Evolution; Jacob’s Ladder: The History of the Human Genome; The Science of Middle-Earth, and (with Luis V. Rey) A Field Guide to Dinosaurs. He lives in Cromer, Norfolk, with his family and numerous pets.

    Read more from Henry Gee

    Related to Across the Bridge

    Related ebooks

    Science & Mathematics For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Why Physics Can’t Tell Us What Life Is

      Oct 21, 2020

      There is just something obviously reasonable about the following notion: If all life is built from atoms that obey precise equations we know—which seems to be true—then the existence of life might just be some downstream consequence of these laws tha

      11 min read

    • Article

      Five Veteran Scientists Tell Us What Most Surprised Them: Fifty years ago, who knew we’d learn to clone genes and find water on Mars?

      Sep 24, 2015

      Turn back the clock to 1965. Science appeared to be marching forward at an unrelenting pace. Biochemists had cracked the genetic code (how DNA translates into proteins), inspiring Life magazine to envision “superbabies with improved minds and bodies.

      7 min read

    • Article

      Mushroom Machines

      Dec 31, 2019

      Mushroom Machines
      3 min read

    • Article

      Philosophy Is a Public Service

      Jan 2, 2020

      Several years ago, I climbed Mt. Washington in Nevada to see the oldest complex life forms on Earth. Typically found at elevations higher than 3,000 meters, bristlecone pine trees can live for as long as five millennia. They do so by growing very slo

      9 min read

    • Article

      When a Good Scientist Is the Wrong Source

      Jun 23, 2021

      Six weeks ago, a reporter, Nicholas Wade, published what seemed to be a blockbuster story, one that, if true, would expose the greatest scandal in recent history. SARS-CoV-2, he wrote, or SARS2 for short, the virus that has driven the global COVID-19

      7 min read

    • Article

      The Superorganism That Created the Pandemic

      Mar 26, 2020

      I’ve spent years adventuring in exotic parts of the world seeking out wildlife—weeks in tents in remote wildernesses, nights uncomfortably holed up in hides in rainforests. I’ve drifted through mangroves on boats, even lodged in a tree-canopy camp. A

      5 min read

    • Article

      Just Because It’s Natural Doesn’t Mean It’s Good

      Aug 19, 2020

      What do anti-vaxxers and anti-GMO campaigners have in common? Underpinning both “antis” is a shared belief that because vaccines and GMOs are “unnatural,” they’re bad, which for many people—whatever their feelings about vaccines and GMOs—segues into

      9 min read

    • Article

      How to Make Sense of Contradictory Science Papers

      Jun 2, 2021

      The science you can come across today can often appear to be full of contradictory claims. One study tells you red wine is good for your heart; another tells you it is not. Over the past year, COVID-19 research has offered conflicting reports about t

      6 min read

    • Article

      Why Physics Is Not a Discipline: Physics is not just what happens in the Department of Physics.

      Apr 21, 2016

      Have you heard the one about the biologist, the physicist, and the mathematician? They’re all sitting in a cafe watching people come and go from a house across the street. Two people enter, and then some time later, three emerge. The physicist says,

      12 min read

    • Article

      Sinking Chips

      Jul 8, 2022

      Sinking Chips
      8 min read

    • Article

      Can We Live Forever?

      Mar 18, 2021

      Can We Live Forever?
      4 min read

    • Article

      The Electromagnetic Force of Fridge Magnets

      Aug 25, 2021

      Science is not just something we do at school or professionals undertake in labs. It is at the heart of how everything works. With the development of applied scientific principles, science enables us to not only understand how things work but how to

      1 min read

    • Article

      The Four Types Of Black Hole

      Nov 3, 2021

      (A RANGE OF DIFFERENT MASSES) These are as-yet-unconfirmed relics from the formation of the Universe in the Big Bang. So far we’ve been able to rule out their existence in certain mass ranges, but the door is still open to the possibility that the Un

      1 min read

    Reviews for Across the Bridge

    0 ratings

    0 ratings0 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words