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In Search of Deep Time: Beyond the Fossil Record to a New History of Life
Cladistics--the science of comparison--is transforming the way paleontologists view evolution. In Search of Deep Time strips away conventional assumptions about the evolution of life to reveal a world that may be far stranger and more humbling than had been previously imagined. The concept of deep time was first used by John McPhee to describe intervals of time incomprehensibly greater than our daily experience. Henry Gee explains the rise of cladistics as the best technique for making sense of the organic changes that unfold within deep time.
267 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1999
6 people are currently reading
300 people want to read
About the author
Henry Gee
63 books188 followersHenry Gee's next book The Wonder of Life on earth, illustrated by Raxenne Maniquiz, is out on 5 February 2026. His other books include The Decline and Fall of the Human Empire, A (Very) Short History of Life on Earth (winner of the 2022 Royal Society Science Book Prize) and The Science of Middle earth. His books have been translated into more than 25 languages. He is represented by Jill Grinberg Literary Management and lives in Cromer, England.
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Displaying 1 - 18 of 18 reviews
July 7, 2007
We tend to think of evolution as being about the world farting around until it worked out how to make us - the perfect animal. This book cures misunderstandings of this kind.
If you think you know what evolution is about, you should read this book to see just how wrong you can be.
If you think you know what evolution is about, you should read this book to see just how wrong you can be.
November 7, 2018
Gee is pointed in paleontology’s penchant for going beyond the evidence to construct a narrative that evolution progresses from simple to complex, in straight-line form (single-cell, multiple cells, fish-amphibian-reptile-mammal-primate-great ape, human). “We invent these stories, after the fact,” he writes, “to justify the history of life according to our own prejudices.”
These prejudices were formed, in part, by the implicit acceptance of Platonic archetypes Gee says. This is the classical view of species that existed prior to Darwin. There were the ideal species types, and then there were the real-life expressions of such (the former was perfection; the latter was imperfection), arranged hierarchically, from simple to complex, with humans with mind at the top. While the classical model was about “Being” (fixed in perfection), Darwin was all about Becoming (change coming from natural selection acting on variation). The popular view now grafts these two notions, he writes, and on this point, he says that “Evolution was thought to follow preset courses from more primitive to more advanced organisms. Natural selection was seen as the motivating force that drove organisms toward their destinies.”
Gee says that we build unsustainable (non-scientific) pictures on very scanty fossil evidence that is spread out over huge gaps in the time (hence, the book’s title) when in fact many alternative scenarios are possible to account for the various sequences of evolutionary change. Gee offers examples where standard descriptions of evolutionary history are just, simply, wrong. Flippers did not evolve so that our ancestors could move from the sea to the land, he says. Rather, “tetrapods evolved limbs before they came ashore, for reasons unconnected with walking on land.” He goes on to say that “limbs with digits evolved in animals that were obligately aquatic, so they presumably evolved for some other reason.” Gee also “challenges the idea that birds evolved from small, tree-living reptiles,” and comments that “the discovery of feathers in patently non-flying dromaeosaurs demonstrates that feathers existed before the evolution of flight. It can no longer be claimed that the origin of birds is inextricably linked with the origin of flight or denied that the heritage of the birds is closely linked with that of the theropod dinosaurs.”
The only scientific method that works for paleontology is the use of the cladogram (the method is “cladistics”), in which particular lineages “are abandoned” as “unknowable.” “To speculate about adaptation in extinct creatures,” Gee writes, is “at best pointless, at worst recklessly misleading.” He says that “With no certain knowledge of what actually happened, all one can do is say that species A and B (as represented by fossil a and fossil b) form a sister-group relationship. Species A could have evolved from B; B could have evolved from A; but both could have evolved from a common ancestor, which may have been a member of A or B, or another unknown species, C.” Cladograms simply show “collateral relationships of greater or lesser extent….cladistics acknowledges the discontinuities of Deep Time and, by acknowledging them, transcend them.” A cladogram is a provisional truth. It “is a hypothesis about the pattern of relationships, which can be tested in light of new evidence.”*
Though heavily pointed in his criticisms, Gee’s caution about the inherent limits to scientific conclusions is healthy. That caution applies to other disciplines as well. How can evolutionary psychology know, for example, the environment in which our ancestors lived, which, it is said, formed our adaptive structural traits and behavioral makeup? Here, Gee questions the largely accepted assumptions regarding the connection between large brain size, intelligence, and language. Gee then lists the various fossil evidence of our said-to-be ancestors that more or less provide a straight-line evolution from apes, to ape-human, to human-ape. That type of presentation is equally unsustainable, scientifically. Rather, he puts these hominid fossil finds into a cladogram that “makes no presumptions about who is ancestral to whom, for such things cannot be known for certain. There are no ‘missing links’, no chain of ancestry and descent, no sign of progressive advancement towards the acme that is humanity.” This resonates as, increasingly, it seems that we are seeing a messier, and less conclusive, hominid family tree.
These prejudices were formed, in part, by the implicit acceptance of Platonic archetypes Gee says. This is the classical view of species that existed prior to Darwin. There were the ideal species types, and then there were the real-life expressions of such (the former was perfection; the latter was imperfection), arranged hierarchically, from simple to complex, with humans with mind at the top. While the classical model was about “Being” (fixed in perfection), Darwin was all about Becoming (change coming from natural selection acting on variation). The popular view now grafts these two notions, he writes, and on this point, he says that “Evolution was thought to follow preset courses from more primitive to more advanced organisms. Natural selection was seen as the motivating force that drove organisms toward their destinies.”
Gee says that we build unsustainable (non-scientific) pictures on very scanty fossil evidence that is spread out over huge gaps in the time (hence, the book’s title) when in fact many alternative scenarios are possible to account for the various sequences of evolutionary change. Gee offers examples where standard descriptions of evolutionary history are just, simply, wrong. Flippers did not evolve so that our ancestors could move from the sea to the land, he says. Rather, “tetrapods evolved limbs before they came ashore, for reasons unconnected with walking on land.” He goes on to say that “limbs with digits evolved in animals that were obligately aquatic, so they presumably evolved for some other reason.” Gee also “challenges the idea that birds evolved from small, tree-living reptiles,” and comments that “the discovery of feathers in patently non-flying dromaeosaurs demonstrates that feathers existed before the evolution of flight. It can no longer be claimed that the origin of birds is inextricably linked with the origin of flight or denied that the heritage of the birds is closely linked with that of the theropod dinosaurs.”
The only scientific method that works for paleontology is the use of the cladogram (the method is “cladistics”), in which particular lineages “are abandoned” as “unknowable.” “To speculate about adaptation in extinct creatures,” Gee writes, is “at best pointless, at worst recklessly misleading.” He says that “With no certain knowledge of what actually happened, all one can do is say that species A and B (as represented by fossil a and fossil b) form a sister-group relationship. Species A could have evolved from B; B could have evolved from A; but both could have evolved from a common ancestor, which may have been a member of A or B, or another unknown species, C.” Cladograms simply show “collateral relationships of greater or lesser extent….cladistics acknowledges the discontinuities of Deep Time and, by acknowledging them, transcend them.” A cladogram is a provisional truth. It “is a hypothesis about the pattern of relationships, which can be tested in light of new evidence.”*
Though heavily pointed in his criticisms, Gee’s caution about the inherent limits to scientific conclusions is healthy. That caution applies to other disciplines as well. How can evolutionary psychology know, for example, the environment in which our ancestors lived, which, it is said, formed our adaptive structural traits and behavioral makeup? Here, Gee questions the largely accepted assumptions regarding the connection between large brain size, intelligence, and language. Gee then lists the various fossil evidence of our said-to-be ancestors that more or less provide a straight-line evolution from apes, to ape-human, to human-ape. That type of presentation is equally unsustainable, scientifically. Rather, he puts these hominid fossil finds into a cladogram that “makes no presumptions about who is ancestral to whom, for such things cannot be known for certain. There are no ‘missing links’, no chain of ancestry and descent, no sign of progressive advancement towards the acme that is humanity.” This resonates as, increasingly, it seems that we are seeing a messier, and less conclusive, hominid family tree.
October 2, 2010
This is a fabulous book that clearly impresses upon one just how much time we're talking about when we talk about fossils and the history of Earth. Great discussion of cladistics--a system of classification--and why the family tree one learns (or learned?) in grade school is misleading.
April 6, 2024
MUSINGS UPON THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN GEOLOGICAL TIME AND ‘EVERYDAY’ TIME
Author Henry Gee wrote in the Introduction to this 1999 book, “Popular views of science assume that cause, effect, and purpose can be easily discerned … Many of the assumptions we make about evolution, especially concerning the history of life as understood from the fossil record are, however, baseless. The reason for this lies with the fact of the scale of geological time that scientists are dealing with, which is so vast that it defies narrative… Any story we tell against the compass of geological time that links these fossils in sequences of cause and effect… is, therefore, only ours to make… Nobody will ever know what caused the extinction of the dinosaurs, because we weren’t there to watch it happen. All we have are two isolated observations---the apparent absence of dinosaurs 65 million years ago, and evidence for a catastrophic phenomenon, such as the impact of an asteroid, at around the same time. There can be no certain link between the two. Geological time admits no narrative in which causes can be linked with effects.” (Pg.. 2)
He continues, “conventional accounts never consider the implications of the scale of Deep Time on the way we think about evolution. If… Deep Time implies intervals more or less incomprehensible to humans, we are entitled to ask whether it Is valid to tell stories about evolution according to the conventions of narrative or drama. If it is not, then every story we tell in which causes are linked with effects, and ancestors are linked with descendants, becomes questionable: we can no longer use Deep Time as a backdrop for the stories we tell ourselves about evolution, and how and why we came to be who we are. Once we realize that Deep Time can never support narratives of evolution, we are forced to accept that virtually everything we thought we knew about evolution is wrong. It is wrong because we want to think of the history of life as a story; but that is precisely what we cannot do. This tension---between Deep Time and the everyday scale of time---is the theme of this book. What we need is an antidote to the historical approach to the history of life---a kind of ‘anti-history’ that recognizes the special properties of Deep Time.” (Pg. 4-5)
He notes, “Because we see evolution in terms of a linear chain of ancestry and descent, we tend to ignore the possibility that some of these ancestors might have been side branches instead---collateral cousins, rather than direct ancestors. The conventional, linear view easily becomes a story in which the features of humanity are acquired in a sequence that can be discerned retrospectively---first an upright stance, then a bigger brain, then the invention of toolmaking, and so on, with ourselves as the inevitable consequence.” (Pg. 32)
He states, “As a working hypothesis, it is simpler to imagine that all the features so characteristic of cats… evolved just once, rather than twice, independently. It is entirely possible that these features really DID evolve independently, on more than one occasion---nobody says that evolution is parsimonious---but for the sake of simplicity, we choose the most parsimonious alternative for the time being, until some other evidence turns up to favor a different view.” (Pg. 41)
He explains, “A plausible yet untestable view of human origins of long standing is the ‘aquatic ape scenario.’ In this scheme, human beings went through a phase in their evolution in which they were aquatic… The aquatic-ape scenario might be true, but I can think of several objections. First, the evidence might be no better explained by this scenario than by any other equally plausible scenario… Second, it is unclear that the particular features chosen by proponents … speak of an ancestry that is particularly aquatic… Third… the evidence advanced in support of the aquatic ape scenario concerns adaptations to circumstances in the past… However… We are not aquatic now, so why should we retain adaptations to a lifestyle we have lost?” (Pg. 100-101)
He observes, “Cladistics… is a way of looking at the world in terms of the pattern that evolution creates, rather than the process that creates the pattern. This means that it is free from assumptions based on particularities of cause and effect… a consequence of this is that cladistics can be used to examine any evolving system, free from any need to consider the peculiarities of the system… Cladistics, because it assumes much less about the evidence, reveals a great deal more. It can be applied to any evolving system that produces, as a consequence of that evolution, a branching pattern of genealogy. The participants do not have to be living organisms for cladistics to work.” (Pg. 167)
He acknowledges, “We do not know for certain that … every 200,000-year-old lineage became extinct, save one, is true. All we can say is that the more we look, the picture of a single African looks stronger, not weaker. However, only a few hundred of the several billion humans now living have been sampled, so there remains the possibility that there are people, somewhere in the world, with varieties of mitochondrial DNA that fall outside the entire human range sampled so far. If these people live outside Africa, the hypothesis of a single African origin will be weakened.” (Pg. 210)
He concludes, “Because of this common heritage, our diverse descendants will still find communion, in a way that might never be achieved with extraterrestrial species. Yet these scattered populations will be sufficiently different from one another that each will have its own perspective to offer on the nature of the things that we hold dear---our place in nature, the meaning of life and intelligence, and so on. The narrow path between similarity and difference might, perhaps, be broad enough for our descendants to discover what, if anything, means to be human.” (Pg. 230)
This book may interest some seeking musings about evolution, and similar topics/.
Author Henry Gee wrote in the Introduction to this 1999 book, “Popular views of science assume that cause, effect, and purpose can be easily discerned … Many of the assumptions we make about evolution, especially concerning the history of life as understood from the fossil record are, however, baseless. The reason for this lies with the fact of the scale of geological time that scientists are dealing with, which is so vast that it defies narrative… Any story we tell against the compass of geological time that links these fossils in sequences of cause and effect… is, therefore, only ours to make… Nobody will ever know what caused the extinction of the dinosaurs, because we weren’t there to watch it happen. All we have are two isolated observations---the apparent absence of dinosaurs 65 million years ago, and evidence for a catastrophic phenomenon, such as the impact of an asteroid, at around the same time. There can be no certain link between the two. Geological time admits no narrative in which causes can be linked with effects.” (Pg.. 2)
He continues, “conventional accounts never consider the implications of the scale of Deep Time on the way we think about evolution. If… Deep Time implies intervals more or less incomprehensible to humans, we are entitled to ask whether it Is valid to tell stories about evolution according to the conventions of narrative or drama. If it is not, then every story we tell in which causes are linked with effects, and ancestors are linked with descendants, becomes questionable: we can no longer use Deep Time as a backdrop for the stories we tell ourselves about evolution, and how and why we came to be who we are. Once we realize that Deep Time can never support narratives of evolution, we are forced to accept that virtually everything we thought we knew about evolution is wrong. It is wrong because we want to think of the history of life as a story; but that is precisely what we cannot do. This tension---between Deep Time and the everyday scale of time---is the theme of this book. What we need is an antidote to the historical approach to the history of life---a kind of ‘anti-history’ that recognizes the special properties of Deep Time.” (Pg. 4-5)
He notes, “Because we see evolution in terms of a linear chain of ancestry and descent, we tend to ignore the possibility that some of these ancestors might have been side branches instead---collateral cousins, rather than direct ancestors. The conventional, linear view easily becomes a story in which the features of humanity are acquired in a sequence that can be discerned retrospectively---first an upright stance, then a bigger brain, then the invention of toolmaking, and so on, with ourselves as the inevitable consequence.” (Pg. 32)
He states, “As a working hypothesis, it is simpler to imagine that all the features so characteristic of cats… evolved just once, rather than twice, independently. It is entirely possible that these features really DID evolve independently, on more than one occasion---nobody says that evolution is parsimonious---but for the sake of simplicity, we choose the most parsimonious alternative for the time being, until some other evidence turns up to favor a different view.” (Pg. 41)
He explains, “A plausible yet untestable view of human origins of long standing is the ‘aquatic ape scenario.’ In this scheme, human beings went through a phase in their evolution in which they were aquatic… The aquatic-ape scenario might be true, but I can think of several objections. First, the evidence might be no better explained by this scenario than by any other equally plausible scenario… Second, it is unclear that the particular features chosen by proponents … speak of an ancestry that is particularly aquatic… Third… the evidence advanced in support of the aquatic ape scenario concerns adaptations to circumstances in the past… However… We are not aquatic now, so why should we retain adaptations to a lifestyle we have lost?” (Pg. 100-101)
He observes, “Cladistics… is a way of looking at the world in terms of the pattern that evolution creates, rather than the process that creates the pattern. This means that it is free from assumptions based on particularities of cause and effect… a consequence of this is that cladistics can be used to examine any evolving system, free from any need to consider the peculiarities of the system… Cladistics, because it assumes much less about the evidence, reveals a great deal more. It can be applied to any evolving system that produces, as a consequence of that evolution, a branching pattern of genealogy. The participants do not have to be living organisms for cladistics to work.” (Pg. 167)
He acknowledges, “We do not know for certain that … every 200,000-year-old lineage became extinct, save one, is true. All we can say is that the more we look, the picture of a single African looks stronger, not weaker. However, only a few hundred of the several billion humans now living have been sampled, so there remains the possibility that there are people, somewhere in the world, with varieties of mitochondrial DNA that fall outside the entire human range sampled so far. If these people live outside Africa, the hypothesis of a single African origin will be weakened.” (Pg. 210)
He concludes, “Because of this common heritage, our diverse descendants will still find communion, in a way that might never be achieved with extraterrestrial species. Yet these scattered populations will be sufficiently different from one another that each will have its own perspective to offer on the nature of the things that we hold dear---our place in nature, the meaning of life and intelligence, and so on. The narrow path between similarity and difference might, perhaps, be broad enough for our descendants to discover what, if anything, means to be human.” (Pg. 230)
This book may interest some seeking musings about evolution, and similar topics/.
April 2, 2011
I found it interesting and readable, but he seemed to repeat himself a lot. Each new chapter, he would begin a new topic, then repeat his central point: you can't posit relationships between species in deep time because there is no way to prove it. I kept thinking, okay, I get it. I felt rather like a student in a lecture. Which may be appropriate since I'm a non-scientist, but it wasn't that difficult a concept.
December 7, 2014
Will inform you on current Paleontological thought. Stress the futility of story telling about fossils. Deep Time is a concept that helps convey the staggering lengths of geologic time. Recovered fossils are so distant and distinct from each other that speculations about Their ecology is almost necessarily wrong.
Changed my thoughts on this subject.
Changed my thoughts on this subject.
September 30, 2015
One of the best non-fiction books I've ever read. And I read A LOT. Henry Gee has a great writing style, but have your favourite search engine on hand- you'll need it for his exhaustive knowledge of scientific species names. He has one of the best combinations of science and narrative I've ever seen. I can't wait to read more by Henry Gee!
December 12, 2018
The main problem I had with this book was the attitude of the author. He was extremely combative. He reminded of the insufferable, and ubiquitous, know-it-all who liked to pick a fight over technicalities. He so exaggerates the shortcomings of the “traditional” view of evolution that it leaves the reader amazed that not everything has been overturned since cladistics became more mainstream. While he does manage to elucidate the limitations of what the word “ancestor” can mean when talking about evolution, he does so unnecessarily argumentative terms. Likewise, while I do feel like I learned more about the nuances of evolution I cannot honestly recommend this book to anyone.
February 3, 2019
Saggio decisamente interessante che pone l'accento sul senso del "deep time", il tempo profondo, e la scarsa se non nulla percezione che ne abbiamo noi. Difficile leggere la stratigrafia, o meglio, difficile capire le implicazioni dei tempi geologici per chi ha una durata di vita di poche decina di rivoluzioni della Terra attorno al Sole.
Questo libro è importante perché ci ricorda che dobbiamo mettere le cose nella giusta prospettiva, che la "Vita" e la sua evoluzione ci sono noti solo come piccoli frammenti rovinati di un filmato estremamente lungo.
Questo libro è importante perché ci ricorda che dobbiamo mettere le cose nella giusta prospettiva, che la "Vita" e la sua evoluzione ci sono noti solo come piccoli frammenti rovinati di un filmato estremamente lungo.
August 11, 2017
I love Henry's writing. He's super intelligent, hysterically funny and Deep Time is on one of my favorite topics, evolution. I emailed back and forth with him a few times. He's very engaging and I enjoyed the exchange. If you enjoy the topic, you'll enjoy his book full of humor and wit and some insight into our most recent common ancestors (cladistics and evolution). Some of Henry's personal experiences at fossil digs are included in the book and prove informative and pretty funny.
January 16, 2023
It starts like the most sane science book (author defines and clarifies the differences between historical sciences and testable experimental/observational sciences), and gradually become evident that the author serves the popular narrative of 'natural history' despite or because of his advocacy of clades; and it ends like science fiction.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
October 9, 2023
Semplicemente una delle letture fondamentali della scienza moderna
April 22, 2016
Finally got around to reading Henry Gee's wonderful book on cladistics and fossils. I enjoyed his literary style, in particular the chapter epigrams from the likes of Borges, HG Wells, and Keats. Amazingly, Gee clearly explains how cladistics works without any use of its potentially off-putting (to the general reader, at least) professional vocabulary (e.g., apomorphies and plesiomorphies and the rest). He does a great job of explaining the origins of the cladistic revolution in paleontology with first-person tales from the fossil fish lab at the BMNH and AMNH (the Gang of Four) and in contrasting the cladistic approach with what he terms the "Romer-Simpson" model of evolutionary analysis. The chapters on how cladistics has revolutionized paleontological interpretations of the origins of tetrapods, of birds, and of humans provide a great entree into these issues for beginners, and a wonderful refresher (with excellent bibliography, if a bit biased towards papers from Nature) for those of us who have been following the arguments.
Highly recommended.
Highly recommended.
July 17, 2013
Really interesting information about cladistics, a new way to classify anything (not just dinosaurs and extinct lifeforms). It doesn't discount evolution, just reorganizes how it could be viewed. Also, the author implies that velociraptors might have climbed trees. How awesome would that have been?
August 23, 2011
A moderately challenging, very thought-provoking read. Clarifies the details of evolutionary theory, challenges misconceptions, and taught me what cladistics is. Have re-read twice because I like what it makes me think.
January 4, 2014
Fascinating and feisty, and a really clear introduction to cladistics.
July 2, 2014
Fascinating. Real science that shows the fallacies behind some of the 'fiction' in popular evolutionary writing.
Displaying 1 - 18 of 18 reviews