Horseshoe Crabs and Velvet Worms by Richard Fortey

 

Source of book: Borrowed from the library

 

My fourth kid just graduated from Jr. High, and will be entering high school this fall. I am getting old, apparently. He’s a great kid, and a voracious reader. And I do mean voracious. As in, read everything he could find about the age of sail including Moby Dick as a 7th grader, and regularly brings home piles of random books from the library. From time to time, he hands one to me after he finishes it and says I should read it. This book is one of those. 

 

While I haven’t read any Richard Fortey, we do own one of his other books (Dry Storeroom No. 1: The Secret Life of the Natural History Museum), which my kid read and enjoyed, so he looked for more by the author. 

 

Fortey is a paleontologist who worked at the Natural History Museum in London until his retirement, which he has apparently spent writing cool books about fossils and things. 

 

Horseshoe Crabs and Velvet Worms is about the history of evolution. Specifically, it is about the living creatures that branched off from the evolutionary tree at various times in the past, becoming the last or one of the last of that branch. He starts with Horseshoe Crabs as a hook, but then goes back and starts at the earliest branches - archea - and works his way forward in time, more or less, although he groups plants and animals into separate chapters, typically. 

 

There are far too many cool critters to mention here - although Fritz would be happy to tell you all about them in detail. Horseshoe Crabs are super cool - check out the Radiolab episode about them, for example. But others are definitely less well known. Velvet Worms are found in New Zealand, like a lot of these survivors, and are strikingly similar to the fossil versions. Invertebrates like Lingula look like they belong in a science fiction movie. And more, of course. Including pictures of many of the living things discussed. Fortey takes a tour of the world looking for these creatures, and that forms part of the book, making it both an enlightening tale of science and an account of a very fun series of excursions. 

 

Bottom line, this book was a blast, and I highly recommend it. It reminded me, in a way, of some of my favorite kid books when I was young, the “Strangest Things” series. (The Insects and the Reptiles were my favorites…)

 

I do want to mention a few lines. The first was about the issue of precambrian fossils. Darwin was puzzled by the seeming lack, followed by an explosion in the cambrian. As it turns out, the fossils weren’t actually missing. 

 

As for the fossils of the organisms that made the Precambrian mounds, the apparent absence of which so perplexed Charles Darwin and his contemporaries, well, they were lurking there all the time; it is just that they were very small. 

 

Small, and soft. And also hard to recognize without experience seeing similar amorphous films and threads and other web-like life forms under a microscope. 

 

I also have to mention the term “endosymbiosis” and the extended discussion of this. Our cells are “eukaryotes,” meaning we have an organized nucleus and other more complex organization. But there is now substantial evidence that those organelles such as mitochondria and (in plants) chloroplasts were originally separate organisms. Each and every one of our cells contains the descendants of even smaller entities inside them. This raises the question of how much of “us” is really “us,” and how much is “other living things.” This endosymbiosis is a relationship involving completely captured organisms that are both us and not-us, even more so than the symbiotic bacteria that live in us, and whose cells outnumber “our” cells. 

 

Fortey also makes a perceptive observation. Human history is brief - extremely brief - compared to the history of life on earth. And yet, we tend to center ourselves. 

 

It is not human nature to acknowledge the work of others, and it is unlikely that many of our species will give due recognition to the contribution of numberless green threads thinner than hair from a baby’s cranium. 

 

It was these tiny organisms that gave us oxygen in our atmosphere, and made higher life possible. 

 

I mentioned the Strangest Things series above. I recall reading about the Lungfish in one of them - they are pretty cool, and very primitive fish. What I hadn’t realized is just how BIG they can get. As in, like 30 kilograms. It is believed, by the way, that it was a relative/ancestor of the lungfish that evolved into land animals, not the Coelacanth. 

 

It was also striking just how many discoveries have been made during my lifetime. Fortey is correct in his statement about this. 

 

One of the best things about paleontology is that fresh and unexpected discoveries are still being made. The day people stop looking is the day nothing new will be found. 

 

Isn’t that inspiring to know? A uniquely human trait seems to be the quest for discovery, the desire to know more and more. And there is so much more to know and discover. 

 

I also love that he points out that there are practical uses for all this discovery. One of the ways we trace evolution is through genetics. We can see how things develop based on genes - including what genes are needed for certain traits. This can, as Fortey notes, help us in understanding genetic medical conditions that affect people today. 

 

As with most scientific books written recently, there is a note of caution regarding the future. Humankind is immensely destructive, and always has been. (Fortey is no fan of the “noble savage” myth in any form. Indigenous humans have caused plenty of extinctions over the millennia.) He particularly calls out, however, certain religious sorts - namely, Young Earth Creationists. Although he doesn’t name them specifically, I have heard the exact thing he cites.

 

I have even met fanatics who maintain that wildlife was created as a source of food and entertainment for just one bipedal hominin, who deserves to have total dominion. 

 

Wildlife has existed for millions of years before us, and understanding that truth should make us a lot less arrogant about our role in nature, and a lot more concerned to preserve that nature that sustains us and that we are a part of. 

 

I should mention that this book goes by the name of Survivor in its UK edition, presumably as a tie-in to a BBC series. I think the US edition has the better cover too, honestly. But the book is worth it in either format.