A Family Place

From Barnes & Noble

As Richard Ellis points out in his introduction, our blue planet would more properly be named "Water" not "Earth." A renowned marine life artist and expert on marine biology, Ellis chronicles the beginnings of life in the oceans and the subsequent evolution of many varied and wonderful forms, including trilobites, armored fish, and sharks, as well as sea turtles and mammals such as manatees and whales.

Publishers Weekly

The ancestors of today's whales, manatees and seals were in fact terrestrial (some even looked rather like wolves); circa 50 million years ago, however, they returned to the sea. Prolific nature writer and marine life artist Richard Ellis (The Search for the Giant Squid; Men and Whales) investigates this phenomenon and many others from bioluminescence to convergent evolution to the origin of life itself in his excellent Aquagenesis: The Origin and Evolution of Life in the Sea (sent too late to PW for review). Combining scientific data with personal opinion (and even giving time to a few crackpot theories), this volume offers both the pleasures of a good narrative and the stimulation of a serious study. Line drawings by Ellis throughout. (Oct.) Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.

Library Journal

This fascinating and scientifically rigorous work by a noted expert on marine biology addresses the beginning of plant and animal life in the sea and the return to the sea of many life forms. Like his other books (e.g., Encyclopedia of the Sea, LJ 9/15/00), this one is illustrated with his meticulous line drawings. Ellis advises readers that the nature of paleontology is speculation because the fossil record is incomplete and subject to varying interpretations, but it is generally agreed that life originated in the sea. In his discussion, he compares living animals such as horseshoe crabs, mollusks, brachiopods, cephalopods, and squid with those preserved in rock. He also examines the characteristics of ancient creatures once thought to be extinct (lungfishes, coelacanths) and the phenomena of bioluminescence and echolocation. Ellis ponders why such animals as sea turtles, seals, manatees, dolphins, and whales, returned to the water after having adapted to land. He weaves descriptions of extinct and living forms of the various species and discusses their evolutionary adaptations. Zoological names are used throughout, and explanatory captions accompany the scientific illustrations. Strongly recommended for all public and academic libraries. Judith B. Barnett, Pell Marine Science Lib., Univ. of Rhode Island, Kingston Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

More lucid science writing from Ellis (Imaging Atlantis, 1998, etc.), who this time cuts a broad swath through the history of marine animals. "This book is about animals whose ancestors came out of the sea and whose descendants returned to it," writes the author. That and a whole lot more, for while almost every aspect of paleontology is rife with ambiguous, speculative, and contentious theories-and Ellis gives many of them sufficient air time in these pages, such as changes in genetic structure to lines of descent-there is no contesting the complexity of the fossil record. And the glory of species complexity is on full display here. From the earliest creatures of the vents, the breeding grounds created by the spreading of the seafloor and strong candidates for the deep-ocean location of the origins of life, to Elaine Morgan's evidence pointing toward an (at least semi-) aquatic ancestor of humans-and she isn't talking about jawless fish, but rather an aquatic ape-Ellis covers an incredible land- and waterscape. There's a rogue's gallery of toothy, spiny creatures (sharks with teeth all over their heads, others big enough and happy to eat a horse) and an equally long list of sideshow marvels, including the wonderful hagfish, which "can emit gallons of nauseating, toxic slime." The theories tendered for the evolution of these creatures are often as fabulous as the creatures themselves: Certainly the descent of whales from giant wolves falls into that category, but less sensational are the beard-pulling contests between academics, such as the Gould/Conway Morris feud. Then there are all the questions that remain unanswered, far more than those with answers, beginning with: How didit all start? Ellis samples from all these topics with the enthusiasm of a child let loose in a candy shop. As entertaining as a three-ring circus, and as scholarly as any intellectually curious lay reader would wish for. (Line drawings by the author) Author tour