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9780226272948

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""An exceptional book, Rereading the Fossil Record draws wisely and appreciatively on the work of fellow historians of science. But it stands on its own as a major contribution that will interest biologists, historians more generally (it's not only good history, it's about history), and philosophers alike."" (Science)

David Sepkoski's narrative shows us how the science of paleontology was transformed in the later twentieth century by the energetic activities of a quite small group of talented individuals. Their journal, Paleobiology, gave their movement a name and an institutional identity, but also an outlet for their radical research program. Foreseeing at an early stage the huge potential of computers, they turned the analysis of the fossil record into a component of evolutionary theorizing that could no longer be ignored or marginalized by the dominant 'modern synthesis.' This is a book from which both evolutionary biologists and historians of twentieth-century science will have much to learn, and it is so readable that they should all enjoy the experience. --Martin J. S. Rudwick, author of Worlds Before Adam and Bursting the Limits of Ti

An exceptional book, Rereading the Fossil Record draws wisely and appreciatively on the work of fellow historians of science. But it stands on its own as a major contribution that will interest biologists, historians more generally (it's not only good history, it's about history), and philosophers alike. (Science)

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David Sepkoski is a senior research scholar at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science. He is coeditor, with Michael Ruse, of The Paleobiological Revolution: Essays on the Growth of Modern Paleontology, also published by the University of Chicago Press.

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