"The Ancestor's Tale" is a pilgrimage back through time; a journey on which we meet up with fellow pilgrims as we and they converge on our common ancestors. Chimpanzees join us at about 6 million years in the past, gorillas at 7 million years, orang utans at 14 million years, as we stride on together, a growing band. The journey provides the setting for a collection of some 40 tales. Each explores an aspect of evolutionary biology through the stories of characters met along the way or glimpsed from afar - the "Elephant Bird's Tale", the "Marsupial Mole's Tale", the "Lungfish's Tale". Together they give a deep understanding of the processes that have shaped life on Earth: convergent evolution, the isolation of populations, continental drift, the great extinctions. The tales are interspersed with prologues detailing the journey, route maps showing joining lineages, and life-like reconstructions of our common ancestors. "The Ancestor's Tale" represents a pilgrimage on an unimaginable scale: our goal is four billion years away, and the number of pilgrims joining us grows vast - ultimately encompassing all living creatures.
At the end of the journey lies something remarkable in its simplicity and transformative power: the first, humble, replicating molecules.
- ISBN10 061861916X
- ISBN13 9780618619160
- Publish Date 1 September 2005 (first published 2 September 2004)
- Publish Status Out of Print
- Out of Print 28 May 2021
- Publish Country US
- Publisher Houghton Mifflin
- Imprint Houghton Mifflin (Trade)
- Format Paperback (US Trade)
- Pages 673
- Language English