Darwin's Fossils: The Collection That Shaped the Theory of Evolution

by Adrian Lister

Reveals how Darwin's study of fossils shaped his scientific thinking and led to his development of the theory of evolution.

Darwin's Fossils is an accessible account of Darwin's pioneering work on fossils, his adventures in South America, and his relationship with the scientific establishment.

While Darwin's research on Galapagos finches is celebrated, his work on fossils is less well known. Yet he was the first to collect the remains of giant extinct South American mammals; he worked out how coral reefs and atolls formed; he excavated and explained marine fossils high in the Andes; and he discovered a fossil forest that now bears his name. All of this research was fundamental in leading Darwin to develop his revolutionary theory of evolution.

This richly illustrated book brings Darwin's fossils, many of which survive in museums and institutions around the world, together for the first time. Including new photography of many of the fossils--which in recent years have enjoyed a surge of scientific interest--as well as superb line drawings produced in the nineteenth century and newly commissioned artists' reconstructions of the extinct animals as they are understood today, Darwin's Fossils reveals how Darwin's discoveries played a crucial role in the development of his groundbreaking ideas.

Genres: Science, Nonfiction, Evolution, Palaeontology, History, Biology, Natural History

218 pages, Paperback

First published April 1, 2018

About the author

Lister is a palaeobiologist interested in patterns and processes of species-level evolution, adaptation and extinction. His research focuses mainly on Quaternary to recent large mammals, with special expertise in deer and elephants (including mammoths).

Reviews

[Sam · Rating 3 out of 5]

Never in my life have I felt like more of a nerd than when I was picking a book up from the library and happened to see a book about fossils, and took it home without reading anything more about it. My fossil and mineral collection has been so much fun that I guess I was pretty well primed for a book about it.

Books like this have to be rated on a different scale than others. This is not Endurance or Into Thin Air, it's a book about fossils with almost as much written about shells as giant mammals, and the giant mammals aren't even the cool ones (mostly giant sloths, armadillos, and llamas).

For anyone wanting to learn more about Darwin and/or fossils, this is a great book to read. It's well-researched and thorough, and I genuinely enjoyed reading about Darwin's enthusiasm and dedication - it is inspiring to read about someone who loves something, even if it's boring. I think my favorite line from this book was, "in 1846 Darwin embarked on eight years of intensive work on barnacles."

On the other hand, this book is so unbelievably dry at times and I think it's frequently pretty inaccessible to someone not familiar with geology or paleontology. The premise of how important fossils were compared to living examples of natural selection didn't feel substantiated, and the conclusion even mentions that Darwin's The Origin of Species only has 2 of its 14 chapters devoted to the fossil record.

Maybe the best part of reading this book is that I can speak a little more intelligently to fossil/evolution nay-sayers. For example, why do we not often see more clear transition between species in the fossil record? 1) Because a very small percentage of living things become fossils, and often due to localized conditions or events, and 2) we actually do see clear transitions in some cases, especially marine life.

[J.S. · Rating 3 out of 5]

I think most people who know something of Charles Darwin's Theory of Evolution know it was in some way inspired by his study of finches and their beaks. Adrian Lister's book seeks to shine a light on how his study of fossils while traveling on the Beagle in South America and the South Pacific contributed as well. Darwin not only found a great deal of prehistoric mammals and marine fossils, but he also was able to figure out how coral atolls formed. And Lister is able to point out how his study of these items would have influenced his thinking in regards to evolutionary science.

For me the book was at its best when recounting the history of Darwin's travels. It bogged down, however, when it got into the detail of some of the mammal fossils and why each was significant or different from what was previously known. I don't doubt Lister is correct in his assessment on how those travels shaped and influenced Darwin's thinking and helped him to unravel the mysteries of evolution, but... I just didn't find it compelling or more than merely interesting.

[Elliot Condous · Rating 5 out of 5]

Brought my appreciation of Darwin to a new level. The discoveries he made and theories he formed while on his huge voyage are incredible. What an amazing adventure it must have been. Imagine sailing to South America and finding entire skeletons of extinct megafauna, at the time unknown to science, literally falling out of eroded river banks. There's so many interesting and detailed stories about his travels in this book. When looking at the development of biology/ecology/geology in the 1800s, Darwin's rationality and humility shine through when compared to the speculations and hubris of other scientists. I really need to read On the Origin of Species...

[Darrin · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was excellent and would be a great companion read to Darwin's Voyage of the Beagle. I really enjoy stories of scientific discovery such as Glyn Williams' Naturalists at Sea: Scientific Travellers from Dampier to Darwin which touched on only a small part of Darwin's expeditions. Darwin's Fossils is much more detailed and I really like the idea that Lister had of taking each stop along the way and talking about how each of Darwin's fossil discoveries impacted his eventual development of the theory of evolution.

The book also gives insight into how impactful Darwin's discoveries were to science and scientists back in the UK and Europe at the time. I had not realize how much just his fossil findings came to be celebrated even before the voyage's end. So many of his original fossils are still in museum collections. It is neat to see them in photos with the original catalog numbers Darwin gave them when they were shipped back to his contemporaries in the UK.

[Sandi Banks · Rating 5 out of 5]

This a beautifully produced book written by Adrian Lister that I purchased at the Natural History Museum in London. Lister is museum expert who relates how Darwin’s fossils found during his expedition on the Beagle lead to his to his theory of evolution.
Since I am a very visual learner, I really appreciated photographs of the fossil finds on how they relate to currently living animals . I was privileged to experiencing Lister giving us a personal behind the scenes tour at the Natural History Museum. My only caveat is parts of book are somewhat technical for a someone like me who is not a science major.

[Leanne · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is such a beautifully published book, filled with illustrations. People like me think that darwin came to his theories concerning evolution by examining the wildlife found on islands and in comparing living creatures--but in fact, he was a great collector of fossils and his theories were informed by his massive collection, started in South America where he traveled as part of his trip around the world on the Beagle. The book is a catalog of the fossils he collected as well as excerpts from his letters and notebooks.... highly recommend for Darwin beginners like me.

[Tom Lane · Rating 5 out of 5]

Learning science in grade school, we heard about Mr. Charles Darwin, presented to children of my generation as a trailblazer who originated the theory of evolution after comparing the variable beaks of finches in the exotic-sounding Galapagos Islands, which we were told is somewhere in the Pacific Ocean. As we got older, we realized the myth-making was overblown. Yet the remembrance of science book illustrations of birds' beaks adapted to their food items remained, supplemented now with our viewing of TV nature shows of the Galapagos swimming iguanas and the tortoises that are specific to each island in the archipelago. But how many of us know that Darwin was an avid fossil collector, and how much his paleontological and geological observations influenced him? Adrian Lister fills in this missing link. This abundantly-illustrated book (there are pictures on almost every page) follows Darwin's travels on the good ship "Beagle" around South America, and to the Falklands (no longer an obscure locale, because of the 1982 U.K.-Argentine war), Tasmania (forever associated for us with a certain Warner Brothers cartoon character), the Galapagos (duh), and atolls in the Pacific and Indian Oceans. The author weaves Darwin's findings, interpretations, and the writings they spawned into a scientific detective story that includes both technical detail and human drama.

Like the Enterprise in the original "Star Trek" TV series, the H.M.S. Beagle set out on a five-year mission of exploration, from December 1831 to October 1836. The ship was a comparatively lightly-armed craft (ten guns), 90 feet long, weighing 235 ton (depending on supplies and cargo aboard), launched in 1820, one of 100 ships of its class in the Royal Navy. Its mandate was to map the coasts of South America, and follow through in an around-the-world trip.

Darwin was a well-connected young man of 24 looking for a mission himself. He dropped out of medical studies to devote himself to natural history. Naval ships carried a physician, who doubled as explorer-naturalist; see, for example the surgeon (and spy) character Stephen Maturin in the 2003 film, "Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World," adapted from three novels in author Patrick O'Brian's Napoleonic Wars opus. Darwin got himself appointed to occupy a more specifically naturalist billet on the Beagle, displacing the person originally posted. It was an underhanded play, but ultimately a boon to science.

To prepare himself, Darwin took an intensive field tutorial in geology from a respected teacher. Equipped with a broad mind, and aided by the ship's library, including the exchange of books that took place between ships and ports, he was able to work competently in zoology, botany, geology, and paleontology.

In the course of the voyage, Darwin collected fossils spanning a vast range of time, from a few thousand years old, to 400 million. He thus encountered some of the oldest life forms then known, as well as being able to deduce their environments, and, seeing fossils of marine life on the Andes, the formation of those mountains. (When the "Beagle" was in port or bay for an extended time, or could be rendezvoused with later, Darwin and colleagues and guides made horse excursions and hikes to the interior.) As a kid growing up on Florida's Tampa Bay and near the Gulf of Mexico, I collected seashells and horseshow crab carapaces; I therefore especially enjoyed the chapter on how the remains of marine life - mollusks, sea lilies (the crinoids that were prominent in the Paleozoic Era), brachiopods, sea urchins, crabs, barnacles, bryozoans, and corals - figured in Darwin's thought. Near Buenos Aires he found the first fossil evidence that horses lived in the Americas before their importation by the Conquistadores. Today we know that horses evolved in what became the Western Hemisphere, moved into Asia, then went extinct in the Americas. The development of the horse became one of the standard "proofs" of evolution presented to elementary school students. Horse-precursor skeletons in that classic order of size and development can be viewed in the Cenozoic mammals hall of the Evolving Planet exhibit at Chicago's Field Museum of Natural History, where I am a tour guide.

Darwin's fossils, sent from time to time back to England as the "Beagle" encountered other ships, or which were left at ports for consignment (which probably was a relief to the crew in cramped shipboard quarters. as these took up space), brought Darwin notice in England's scientific circles. The specimens were carefully labelled and recorded in his journals. The materials are among the treasures of the Natural History Museum in London, author Lister's institution, though some have been lost in the course of time. A number of species of animals terrestrial and aquatic, both extinct and extant, were named for their discoverer, Mr. Darwin, by specialists to whom he addressed his samples, principally because so few people had been collecting in the places his ship visited.

Darwin's voluminous writings added to his reputation, which was already in place by the time "The Origin of Species" was published in 1859. For example, following the voyage, Darwin wrote a huge monograph on both living and fossil barnacles, detailing variations both between and within species. This was a background to his theory of natural selection, as much as was his comparison of bird beaks. Before this, he had only noted artificial selection, that is, human selective breeding of domesticated animals.

Before he went on the "Beagle" expedition, Darwin was already having thoughts of evolution, as were many other scientists. Besides his better-known study of Galapagos fauna, his fossil finds, especially of the mammals of South America, were important to his thinking. So we have the first line of his "Origin of Species": "When on board H.M.S. 'Beagle' as naturalist, I was much struck with certain facts in the distribution of the organic beings inhabiting South America, and in the geological relations of the present to the past inhabitants of that continent." The fossil discoveries, while not themselves sparking Darwin's ideas about evolution, helped confirm him in them.

Darwin struggled with the question of why the ancient behemoths, such as giant ground sloths - also on display at the Field Museum - that he found in South America died off. It is now thought that change in climate leading to change from the grassland environment and food sources that fed these species, into forests, was key.

The 1800s were a time of grand-theory making, in both the natural and social sciences. (Plenty of early sociological and psychological theories were later overturned.) The great age of the earth was being established in geology, and that afforded time for the "succession and transmutation of species" to have taken place. It was also a day when scientists were sometimes overconfident and hubristic, for example, "identifying" a species of mastodon from a single tooth (p. 66). Creationists cite this dubious approach as an argument against evolution. Sadly, as I see in my readings associated with my service at the Field Museum, this naming of species from paltry remains still takes place; perhaps because "discovering" a new species gets the "finder" attention and tenure in academia.

Be ready to slog through a lot of mammal skeleton anatomy. But follow as sequences of logic unfold. There are fine sections in the book that trace Darwin's reasoning about the development of life, and even of how coral atolls formed - which was a puzzle to scientists then, who were speculating about rising and falling sea levels (the theory of glacial periods - Ice Ages - was being formulated). Here, the step-by-step deductions and application of the evidence from fossil finds are elegant.

Beyond his scientific reasoning, Darwin had an aesthetic sense. Quotes from his journals show a sensitivity to the beauties of the lands he visited, and a sense of wonder at the discoveries he made. It is pleasing to have these glimpses into the soul of a scientist.

Here is a book for the enthusiast of the history of science, of how background and temperament and discovery intersect, and of simply pleasurable and profitable reading.

[Hilary "Fox" · Rating 3 out of 5]

Darwin's Fossils is the first book to chronicle and explain the importance of Darwin's fossil collecting to the development of his theory of evolution. The first chapter explains Darwin's life and the voyage of the Beagle, the interest he took in geology and how that contributed to his theory of evolution, and how paleontology was developing around that time. The final chapter focuses entirely upon the way his evolutionary leanings developed and changed over time into what eventually turned into The Origin of Species and The Descent of Man.

All of the other chapters are focused upon singular collections of fossils - giant mammals, marine animals, petrified forests, and the explanation of coral islands. Reading the chapters in order presents a very fine view of how Darwin discovered what he did, the broad array of interests he held, and how he was as successful as he was by courting the best of the best in the various fields to help identify and study the finds.

The book contains many excerpts from Darwin's letters and writings, as well as others writing about him. Consistent throughout the full text is the sense of awe, wonder, and curiosity that Darwin approached the world with. It's impossible to read this and not feel much of the enthusiasm that Darwin himself must have felt at so many of these "wonderful" finds.

[Jrobertus · Rating 4 out of 5]

Darwin spent three years sailing on The Beagle. He spent a great deal of time exploring South America; since he was an accomplished geologist as well as biologist, his hands on discoveries of fossils in their natural settings set his critical mind to pondering. The result was his theory of evolution by natural selection which has been described as “the best idea anyone ever had”. This book is richly illustrated with pictures of his actual finds and related ones, and the accompanying narrative puts these finds into perspective with Darwin’s time and with current thinking. The book is very well done but it is a lot of material and may appeal to scientists more than lay readers. The description of his thoughts and notes makes me appreciate Darwin even more than I already did. Today we understand plate tectonics, continental drift and the mechanics of DNA replication. Darwin had none of this knowledge but still got the big picture. He could see that South America was rising from the sea as the fossil depositions made clear, but how did it happen? Darwin was always a cautious observer and often stated that certain observations could not presently be accounted for, but still he saw what had to be true. This book is worth paging through even if you don’t want to read every case study. For one thing it is gorgeous.

[Javi Mardo · Rating 5 out of 5]

Realmente muy bueno. Una forma muy didáctica de acercar los estudios de Darwin, y logra mostrar lo increíble que era la capacidad de interpretación y de relación y el profundo interés en todas las ciencias. Ve mucho más allá de ser el responsable de la teoría de la evolución... va a sus orígenes y cómo surge esta teoría, desde la geología y la biología y el aporte de los fósiles.
Fácil de leer y sorprendente en cada página.

[john mccormick · Rating 4 out of 5]

For one the book is richly illustrated. I have read a fair number of books on Darwin and this book has a different emphasis , the fossils Darwin was studying and discovering on his thorough travels in South America. The book is easy to read and not at all technical and even though it's from a university press. If you like to read about natural history I recommend the book without reservation.

[Envy · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really enjoyed reading this book, it was written in a much easier way to understand compared to Darwin's own writing in Origin, and gave clearer explanations. I particularly liked the last chapter talking about just how all of the information and material Darwin collected ended up contributing to his theory.

[Paleoanthro · Rating 3 out of 5]

A great read into the insights fossils provided Darwin into developing the theory of natural selection.

[Rae · Rating 4 out of 5]

Evolution. Beagle voyage. Coral reef formation. Paper clip ammonites. Helpful drawings and photographs.