Gorgon: Paleontology, Obsession, and the Greatest Catastrophe in Earth's History

Amazon.com
In Gorgon, geologist Peter Ward turns his attention reluctantly away from the asteroid collision that killed all the dinosaurs and instead focuses on a much older extinction event. As it turns out, the Permian extinction of 250 million years ago dwarfs the dino's 65-million-year-old Cretaceous-Tertiary armageddon. Ward's book is not a dry accounting of the fossil discoveries leading to this conclusion, but rather an intimate, first-person account of some of his triumphs and disappointments as a scientist. He draws a nice parallel between the Permian extinction and his own rather abrupt in research focus, revealing the agonizing steps he had to take to educate himself about a set of prehistoric creatures about which he knew almost nothing. These were the Gorgons, carnivorous reptiles whose ecological dominance preceded that of the more pop-culture-ready dinosaurs.

They would have had huge heads with very large, saberlike teeth, large lizard eyes, no visible ears, and perhaps a mixture of reptilian scales and tufts of mammalian hair.... The Gorgons ruled a world of animals that were but one short evolutionary step away from being mammals.

With characteristic enthusiasm, Ward transports readers with him to South Africa's Karoo desert, where he participated in field expeditions seeking fossils of these fearsome creatures. He suffers routine tick patrols, puff-adder avoidance lessons, stultifying thirst, and the everyday humiliations of being the new guy on a field team. Besides telling a fascinating paleological story, Gorgon lets readers feel a bone-hunter's passion and pain. --Therese Littleton

From Publishers Weekly
Millions of years before dinosaurs, gorgons roamed the earth. Like a creature out of Greek mythology, the gorgon was a lizard the size of a lion, with a huge head, razor-sharp teeth, reptilian eyes, a long, slashing tail and, perhaps, mammalian hair along with its reptilian scales. Then, almost in an instant, at the end of the Permian period 250 million years ago, the gorgons were gone, along with most other major land and maritime species, both plants and animals. The Permian extinction was greater than the catastrophe that killed off the dinosaurs. Paleontologist Ward (Rare Earth; The End of Evolution; etc.) recounts in this memoir his decade-long search in South Africa's Karoo Desert for clues to the cause of this extinction. By studying the fossil record in the Karoo, Ward concluded, contrary to accepted belief, that the extinction took place simultaneously on land and in the sea, rather than in two stages, and that the gorgon was in essence asphyxiated by a decrease of oxygen in the atmosphere, caused by a series of catastrophes that began with the dropping of sea levels. Some readers may wish Ward had cut to the chase and arrived at his conclusions a chapter or two sooner and focused less on elements of personal memoir, but young people aspiring to be the next Indiana Jones will learn from this realistic account of the quotidian details and battles of fieldwork. 16 pages of b&w photos not seen by PW.Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist
Paleontologist Ward (The Life and Death of Planet Earth [BKL D 15 02]) is one of the most popular writers on extinct life, and here he adopts a personal voice in this account of his fieldwork in the 1990s. Imparting the lure of the intellectual challenge that drew him to the Great Karoo Desert of South Africa--the cause of the great Permian/Triassic extinction 250 million years ago--Ward also chronicles the arduous reality of field research. Dispelling romantic notions about the life of a practicing paleontologist, Ward narrates a decade of journeys to the Karoo, noting the tedious physical effort, rustic accommodations, dissension within the field crew, and a lab disaster that destroyed an entire year's work. Ward had a wary relationship with his South African host, Roger Smith, an expert on fossils of the Karoo. However, the two were one in their drive to solve the Permian/Triassic mystery, and Ward's vibrant writing evokes an ancient zoology abruptly wiped out. Fine fare for future scientists. Gilbert Taylor
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Book Description
The gorgons ruled the world of animals long before there was any age of dinosaurs. They were the T. Rex of their day until an environmental cataclysm 250 million years ago annihilated them—along with 90 percent of all plant and animal species on the planet—in an event so terrible even the extinction of the dinosaurs pales in comparison. For more than a decade, Peter Ward and his colleagues have been searching in South Africa’s Karoo Desert for clues to this world: What were these animals like? How did they live and, more important, how did they die? In Gorgon, Ward examines the strange fate of this little known prehistoric animal and its contemporaries, the ancestors of the turtle, the crocodile, the lizard, and eventually dinosaurs. He offers provocative theories on these mass extinctions and confronts the startling implications they hold for us. Are we vulnerable to a similar catastrophe? Are we nearing the end of human domination in the earth’s cycle of destruction and rebirth? Gorgon is also a thrilling travelogue of Ward’s long, remarkable journey of discovery and a real-life adventure deep into Earth’s history.

About the Author
Peter Ward, a recognized authority on mass extinctions, is professor of geological sciences at the University of Washington in Seattle. His books include Future Evolution, The End of Evolution, and, with Donald Brownlee, Rare Earth and The Life and Death of Planet Earth.


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An elucidation of the fieldwork and thought that determined the nature of the great Permian extinction. For a decade, ace scientific storyteller Ward (The Life and Death of Planet Earth, Jan. 2003, etc.) lent his geopaleontological skills to the study of the Cretaceous-Tertiary mass extinction, which was revealed to be the work of a giant asteroid. Then the even greater extinction that ended the Permian period caught his imagination. What was the cause? Could it be detected through an examination of the Permian-Triassic boundary? Was there a continuous sedimentary record to pursue this line of inquiry? With a group of colleagues, Ward (Geological Sciences/Univ. of Washington, Seattle) set about trying to decipher the fossil record as exposed in South Africa's Karoo Desert, a formidable and taxing landscape as difficult to contend with as South African society, which was in the midst of its own evolutionary debacle, to which the author pays close attention while artfully choreographing his scientific life. Drawing together an impressive number of narrative threads, Ward presents the findings of his team's fieldwork like so many wares at a flea market: changes in floodplain morphology, isotopic analysis, biostratigraphy, the evidence of carbon dioxide in vast quantities. Measuring their findings against those of other researchers, he confronts the possibility of another asteroid event and the reality of a world shaped by calamities, a troubled and dangerous world that is reflected in the unease besetting South Africa. Ward revels in the moments of "ka-ching-or whatever brains do when connections are made," but the extraordinary joys of discovery and insight are countered by the unrelentingbeastliness of the environment and the moments of qualm when, upon leaving his family for months at a time, he wonders, "what the hell was the use of finding out what had caused some long-ago extinction anyway?" Highly entertaining, and particularly evocative of those times when the "ka-ching" sounds, opening entirely new pathways to hare down. Agent: Katinka Matson/Brockman Inc.


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