Evolution

When I started this book, I was delighted with the opening narrative, which describes the author, Anthony Martin, accompanied by his students, searching out alligators in their burrows. Martin provides a fairly full picture of how alligators use their burrows, not only to escape dry, hot days, but also to rear young and maintain a watery refuge. Scanning through the chapter titles and image inserts, it was clear I would be reading the tales of many burrowing animals, extant and extinct, from arthropods to megafauna. After reading about human cultures that lived (or still live) underground, I skipped through the chapters, stopping to delve into those that piqued my interest. In the chapter on terraforming a planet, Martin describes his own doctoral research on trilobites in coastal Georgia, including details that provide insight into how we construct the past with the evidence at hand. This section alone would intrigue my...