Foreword : why people do not accept evolution -- To the reader : is evolution a threat to your religious beliefs? -- Prologue : fossils and evolution -- Acknowledgments -- pt. I. Evolution and the fossil record -- 1. The nature of science -- What is science? -- Science and belief systems -- Belly buttons and testability -- Natural and supernatural -- Science, pseudoscience, and baloney detection -- Follow the evidence wherever it may lead -- 2. Science and creationism -- Mything links -- The genesis of genesis -- What is creationism? -- Twentieth-century creationism -- "Intelligent design", or "breathtaking inanity"? -- The monkey business of creationism -- 3. The fossil record -- Lucky accidents of fossilization -- Faunal succession or "flood geology"? -- The surreal world of "flood geology" -- The Grand Canyon through the looking glass -- Shop of foolishness? -- Dates with rocks -- Punk eek, transitional forms, and quote-miners -- 4. The evolution of evolution -- Before Darwin -- The evolution of Darwin -- The Neo-Darwinian evolutionary synthesis -- Challenges to Neo-Darwinism -- Unfinished synthesis -- Lamarck revisited -- Neutralism, junk DNA, and molecular clocks -- Macroevolution and evo/devo -- The evidence of evolution -- The family tree of life -- Homology -- Vestigial structure and other imperfections -- Embryology -- Biogeography -- Evolution happens all the time! -- 5. Systematics and evolution -- What is systematics? -- What is taxonomy? -- Ladders, bushes, mosaics and "missing links" -- The cladistic revolution -- Ancestor worship -- The molecular third dimension -- The branching tree of life.
pt. II. Evolution? : the fossils say YES! -- 6. Life's origins -- To the blazing hot North Pole -- Recipe for primordial soup -- Mosh pits, fool's gold, kitty litter, black smokers, and mud -- Communal living builds complex cells -- Probability and the origin of life -- 7. Cambrian "explosion", or slow fuse? -- The creationists' favorite myth -- Step 1 : planet of the scum -- Step 2 : the garden of Ediacara -- Step 3 : the little shellies -- Step 4 : in with a whimper, not a bang -- 8. Spineless wonders of evolution -- Invertebrate transitions -- The incredible world of microfossils -- The story in the seashells -- What about macroevolution? -- 9. Fish tales -- Show some backbone! -- It's a long way from amphioxus -- Jaws : the evolutionary story -- 10. Fish out of water -- The great leap upward -- Lobe fins lead the way -- Four on the floor -- 11. Onto the land and back to the sea : the amniotes -- Innovative eggs -- Evolution of the great sea dragons -- Snakes with legs and hopping crocodiles -- 12. Dinosaurs evolve, and fly -- Dinosaur transitions -- Lifestyles of the huge and ancient -- Dinosaurs are alive! -- 13. Mammalian explosion -- From amniote to synapsid to mammals -- Furballs in the age of dinosaurs -- Radiation in the aftermath -- Lions and tigers and bears, oh my! -- 14. Bossies and blowholes -- Thundering hooves -- Tiny horses, hornless rhinoceroses, and thunder beasts -- Kingdom of cloven hooves -- Walking whales -- Dumbo and the mermaid -- 15. The ape's reflection? -- The only transition that really matters -- The truth about human fossils -- The third chimpanzee -- 16. Why does it matter? -- Deceit in the name of the Lord -- Why should we care? -- Choices for the future.
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