Cambrian Ocean World, John Foster
Cambrian Ocean World, John Foster
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Cambrian Ocean World
Ancient Sea Life of North America

Author: John Foster

Narrator: David Stifel

Unabridged: 16 hr 46 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Tantor Media

Published: 12/27/2022

Synopsis

This volume, aimed at the general audience, presents life and times of the amazing animals that inhabited Earth more than 500 million years ago. The Cambrian Period was a critical time in Earth's history. During this immense span of time nearly every modern group of animals appeared. Although life had been around for more than 2 million millennia, Cambrian rocks preserve the record of the first appearance of complex animals with eyes, protective skeletons, antennae, and complex ecologies. Grazing, predation, and multi-tiered ecosystems with animals living in, on, or above the sea floor became common. The cascade of interaction led to an ever-increasing diversification of animal body types. By the end of the period, the ancestors of sponges, corals, jellyfish, worms, mollusks, brachiopods, arthropods, echinoderms, and vertebrates were all in place. The evidence of this Cambrian "explosion" is preserved in rocks all over the world, including North America, where the seemingly strange animals of the period are preserved in exquisite detail in deposits such as the Burgess Shale in British Columbia. Cambrian Ocean World tells the story of what is, for us, the most important period in our planet's long history.

About John Foster

John Foster is director of the Museum of Moab in Moab, Utah. He served for thirteen years as curator of paleontology at the Museum of Western Colorado and adjunct faculty at Colorado Mesa University in Grand Junction. He has worked in Cambrian deposits in several areas of the western states, including California, Nevada, Arizona, Utah, Colorado, Idaho, and South Dakota. He is author of Jurassic West: The Dinosaurs of the Morrison Formation and Their World.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Pam Hurd on October 08, 2024

There is so much information that it is like sipping from a fire hydrant. I learned so much yet was able to retain a fairly small fraction of what was presented. And I am not even talking about the often long lists of scientific names. This could be a textbook that would take at least two semesters......more

Goodreads review by Laura on March 15, 2021

Everything you ever wanted to know about trilobites. I got this book because I wanted some escapist reading and lo and behold the Cambrian was the era of the Garden of Evil and original sin: the first appearance of creatures that preyed on each other. Prior life forms got by on various chemical proc......more

Goodreads review by Volodymyr on January 24, 2022

Not easy to read, especially as a first book of the year. Many times was quite challenging, geological part especially. On the other hand it was really interesting to find out more about Cambrian explosion, life forms and many other things... More or less trilobites are well known but have never hea......more

Goodreads review by Nisha on August 13, 2020

Interesting subject matter, dense delivery More than anything, my fascination with paleontology is what led me to this book and it's what kept me reading for over a month when I could have been doing anything else. It's an interesting topic but the author's delivery is more fitting to a textbook.......more

Goodreads review by Kathleen on December 21, 2024

Excellent…amazing. And so well written!......more

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