Foreword : why people do not accept evolution -- To the reader : is evolution a threat to your religious beliefs? -- Prologue : fossils and evolution -- Acknowledgments -- pt. I. Evolution and the fossil record -- 1. The nature of science -- What is science? -- Science and belief systems -- Belly buttons and testability -- Natural and supernatural -- Science, pseudoscience, and baloney detection -- Follow the evidence wherever it may lead -- 2. Science and creationism -- Mything links -- The genesis of genesis -- What is creationism? -- Twentieth-century creationism -- "Intelligent design", or "breathtaking inanity"? -- The monkey business of creationism -- 3. The fossil record -- Lucky accidents of fossilization -- Faunal succession or "flood geology"? -- The surreal world of "flood geology" -- The Grand Canyon through the looking glass -- Shop of foolishness? -- Dates with rocks -- Punk eek, transitional forms, and quote-miners -- 4. The evolution of evolution -- Before Darwin -- The evolution of Darwin -- The Neo-Darwinian evolutionary synthesis -- Challenges to Neo-Darwinism -- Unfinished synthesis -- Lamarck revisited -- Neutralism, junk DNA, and molecular clocks -- Macroevolution and evo/devo -- The evidence of evolution -- The family tree of life -- Homology -- Vestigial structure and other imperfections -- Embryology -- Biogeography -- Evolution happens all the time! -- 5. Systematics and evolution -- What is systematics? -- What is taxonomy? -- Ladders, bushes, mosaics and "missing links" -- The cladistic revolution -- Ancestor worship -- The molecular third dimension -- The branching tree of life --
pt. II. Evolution? : the fossils say YES!
To the blazing hot North Pole
Recipe for primordial soup
Mosh pits, fool's gold, kitty litter, black smokers, and mud
Communal living builds complex cells
Probability and the origin of life
7. Cambrian "explosion", or slow fuse?
The creationists' favorite myth
Step 1 : planet of the scum
Step 2 : the garden of Ediacara
Step 3 : the little shellies
Step 4 : in with a whimper, not a bang
8. Spineless wonders of evolution
The incredible world of microfossils
The story in the seashells
What about macroevolution?
It's a long way from amphioxus
Jaws : the evolutionary story
11. Onto the land and back to the sea : the amniotes
Evolution of the great sea dragons
Snakes with legs and hopping crocodiles
12. Dinosaurs evolve, and fly
Lifestyles of the huge and ancient
From amniote to synapsid to mammals
Furballs in the age of dinosaurs
Radiation in the aftermath
Lions and tigers and bears, oh my!
14. Bossies and blowholes
Tiny horses, hornless rhinoceroses, and thunder beasts
15. The ape's reflection?
The only transition that really matters
The truth about human fossils
Deceit in the name of the Lord
