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Aquagenesis: The Origin and Evolution of Life in the Sea Paperback – January 28, 2003

by Richard Ellis (Author)

4.4 15 ratings

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The renowned marine biologist and author of The Search for the Giant Squid retraces the grand story of more than three billion years of life on Earth by revisiting the oceans, where life began and still flourishes in more than 26,000 known species. Reprint.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Penguin Books; First Edition (January 28, 2003)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 320 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0142001562
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0142001561
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 12.8 ounces
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6.08 x 0.69 x 9.22 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #2,804,354 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #744 in Marine Biology (Books)
- #1,499 in Ecosystems
- #8,794 in Evolution (Books)

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4.4 15 ratings

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Awesome book about the evolution of marine animals

Reviewed in the United States on July 7, 2017

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Awesome book about the evolution of marine animals. Very heavy on scientific vocabulary and species names, but I'm a marine bio student, so that was no problem for me.

Reviewed in the United States on November 11, 2001

I bought this book after reading the author's previous "Search for the Giant Squid". Giant Squid was very good. This book however,is a double edge sword, it has great illustrations and the topics look interesting, BUT many facts are wrong!
Examples: page 2, states that the Dinosaurs "disappeared hundreds of millions of years ago" (65 million years would have been correct.) Page 117 identifies the Mississippian Age Bear Gulch Formation as Devonian Age. Page 51 and 52 and 53 list Horseshoe crabs as dating from 200 million years ago but there are well known horseshoe crabs as old as 370 million years old!
Page 53 also lists Aglaspids as being horseshoe crabs when they are not considered to be.
I teach, and the accuracy of material is important. I don't want to present ideas to my students if they aren't right. The book is interesting, but the errors I see at a quick skim make me pause.

74 people found this helpful

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Michael M Lastra

Great ocean creature information

Reviewed in the United States on March 26, 2019

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Wonderful research and data on our life in the sea.

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Tim F. Martin

Decent overview of most marine animal evolution

Reviewed in the United States on January 20, 2005

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Author Richard Ellis in _Aquagenesis_ originally sought out to document in a popular science format how the ancestors of marine mammals, reptiles, and birds returned to the sea. In the process of researching the book Ellis became intrigued with the phenomenon of life in the water, from the origin of life itself - which likely took place in water - to the evolution of marine invertebrates and fish. As result, the scope of the book widened considerably.

Ellis recounted some of the theories about the origin of life. The main one he reviewed was that life may have first appeared around hydrothermal vents in the deep sea, perhaps from impact generated hydrothermal systems (as for a period of about 200 million years, very roughly between 3.9 and 3.8 billion years ago, the Earth may have experienced as many as 10,000 impacts by extraterrestrial bodies). Not only would such environments have been plentiful, but they would have aided by virtue of high temperatures the creation of organic compounds and would have been places shielded from ultraviolet radiation.

I found fascinating his discussion of the Ediacaran (or Vendian) fauna, the oldest recorded animals, fossils of soft-bodied organisms that lived between 565 and 535 million years ago. The Ediacaran fauna is unusual; many of these organisms come in strange shapes and sizes, have no recognizable fronts, backs, heads, tails, circulatory, nervous, or digestive systems. Many of them vaguely resembled modern jellyfish, though they appear to have been benthic (or bottom-dwelling) organisms ranging in size from a few millimeters to a meter in diameter. One researcher (Gregory Retallack) according to Ellis believed that the Ediacarans were not soft-bodied animals at all but rather a type of lichen, with a sturdier structure made of substances not unlike chitin. Another paleontologist, Adolf Seilacher, wrote that the Ediacarans are unrelated to any existing lifeform (calling the Ediacarans as a group the vendozoans) and postulated that their structure was rather like that of an air mattress.

The much discussed Burgess Shale fauna is well covered in this book, along with the highly publicized disagreements between the late Stephen J. Gould, who felt the bizarre fauna represented many weird, wonderful, failed experiments, and Simon Conway Morris, who felt that researchers had focused too much on the differences rather than the similarities of the Burgess Shale animals to known species and phyla.

Ellis provided a good summary of squids, octopi, ammonites, belemnites, and the nautiloids (including the five existing species of nautilus), though much of his short section on trilobites quoted or paraphrased (with due credit) Richard Fortey's excellent book _Trilobite_. I think he could have been much more thorough though in his very brief discussion of the eurypterids (sea scorpions).

The evolution of fish is given wonderful treatment, accompanied by (as is much of the text) by Ellis' skillful black and white illustrations. I found his coverage of the coelacanths particularly interesting, noting some of the mysteries that even the living fish present (such as the function of their "rostral organ" - perhaps it is used to detect weak electrical fields). I also enjoyed his section on bioluminescence, something that still presents an enigma to biologists (such as how the luminous bacteria that some species depend upon to light up in the ocean depths are acquired, particularly if they cannot exist outside of their host and the young of the species are not born with the bacteria already present). Also worthwhile was Ellis' reporting of the Bear Gulch Limestone Formation of Montana (dating back to 320 million years ago from the Mississippian), a truly excellent fossil site that has yielded 4,500 specimens representing 113 species of fish, many beautifully preserved. A number of unusual fossils have been found there, such as the shark _Damocles serratus_, so named because of a dorsal spine with a serrated edge underneath, one that hung over the head of the animal, not unlike the sword that hung over the head of Damocles in ancient Greece.

Although not marine animals, the evolution of vertebrate limbs is covered as well. Ellis summarized the writings of Jenny Clack and others, noting the theory that the early amphibians used their legs not for terrestrial locomotion but for movement in the water or on river and lake bottoms, and that the study of the origin of tetrapods and the invasion of land by vertebrate animals are two issued that (according to researchers E. B. Daeschler and N. Shubin) need to be "decoupled."

Reptiles aren't given as much coverage as one might think. While sea snakes, crocodilians, and sea turtles are very well covered (the latter with a nice rundown of living species), the Mesozoic marine reptiles are given short shrift. Ellis has said in his subsequent book on Mesozoic marine reptiles, _Sea Dragons_ that he cut them out of _Aquagenesis_ due to space requirements.

The evolution of penguins and particularly marine mammals - sea otters, seals, walruses, whales, dolphins, porpoises, manatees, and dugongs - has some of the best coverage of any subject in the book. Particularly interesting were the problems with the pinnipeds (seals) in the fossil record, how they appear already to be fairly well specialized in the Miocene (about 24 million years ago), lacking much in the way of transitional forms; also the possibility of separate ancestors for the eared seals and walruses (perhaps a bearlike progenitor) and the earless seals (maybe an otterlike ancestor).

Near the end Ellis presented the controversial Aquatic Ape theory that humans descended from an ancestor that may have spent a fair amount of time in shallow coastal waters. Citing evidence presented by Alister Hardy and Elaine Morgan that man may have had an aquatic past - the presence of large amounts of subcutaneous fat, hairless bodies, the only terrestrial mammals that can hold their breath, that humans can swim almost from birth, noses well adapted to keep out water from nasal cavities - Ellis also recounted the opposition this theory has met.

Though I found a few errors in the book, overall it was enjoyable.

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Red Daley

Great Book!

Reviewed in the United States on July 31, 2013

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This book should be required reading for anyone involved in environmental sciences or marine biology. Packed with information it would take years to gather on your own.

One person found this helpful

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Fan of Ingersoll

Very well done!

Reviewed in the United States on December 6, 2004

I have a copy of this book, and I would highly recommend it to anyone who wishes to know more about animal history, before, during and after life emerged from the ocean. As a simple lay person without a biology degree, this book has been a great asset to me personally when seeking answers about primitive creatures. This book introduced me to many creatures I'd never heard of, and indepth information on ones I had. It's one of my favorite books and much treasured. -Sharon Mooney, NC, USA

2 people found this helpful

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R. Chou

Aquagenesis : The Origin and Evolution of Life in the Sea

Reviewed in the United States on June 15, 2005

this is a great book to read about the evolution of sea organisms evolving into land animals. very good black and white drawings by the author.

One person found this helpful

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