Table of Contents

Preface
List of Illustrations

Chapter 1: Imagining Life’s Origins

The Definition of Life
Genesis Theories

Spontaneous Generation
Panspermia
The Primordial Soup Theory

Chapter 2: Inventing Evolution

Troublesome Words

Descent with Modification
The Species Quagmire

Naming the Beasts

Darwin, From Man to God

Natural Selection: Evolution’s Engine
The Cult of Evolution

Chapter 3: Distorting Science

The Myth of a Method

Theory Vs. Hypothesis
The Unscientific Method

The Facts of Evolution
To See the Invisible
The Plight of the Black Mouse
The Case of the Noxious Newts

Chapter 4: Hunting the First Life

Fossils Incognito

Visions of Early Earth
Footprints of the First Organism
Volcanic Outbursts
To Be or Not To Be…Stromatolites
Primordial Soup Leftovers
Grade: Incomplete

The Recipe for Primordial Soup

Chapter 5: Concocting Genetic Clues

Evolution’s Timepiece

Phylogenetics: The Guessing Game

The Holey Trees
Defective Corrections

The Genetic Iron Curtain

The Maker of Mutations
Sexy Molecules

Chapter 6: Solving the Fossil Riddle

Meet the Ediacarans

The 50-Year Mystery
A Precambrian Buffet

The Cambrian Explosion

Fossil Hallucinations
Cryptic Species
The First Land Animals

The Lazarus Effect

Chapter 7: Spying on Natural Selection

Attack of the Cloned Bacteria

Bacterial Fitness in Evolution’s Gym
Playing God in the Lab
Cryptic Genes

The Search for Evolution

Transient Change
The Mystery of Maladaptation

Chapter 8: Separating Apes from Humans

The First Primates

Indefinite Definitions

Hominoid Vs. Hominid
The Hominin Debate
The Human Question

The Hominid Divide

X Marks the Spot
The First Hominid

Chapter 9: Reassembling Ancestry

The Fossil Jigsaw Puzzle

The Trouble with Subspecies
Fragmented Logic
The Missing Pieces
The Mismatched Head

The Name Game

Archaic, Gracile, and Robust
The Human Muddle
Alias: Hominid

Chapter 10: Biasing the Fossil Record

Fossil Politics

Paleo Correctness
Overactive Imaginations

Hominid Envy

The Missing Monographs
Top-Secret Fossils
Lumpers Vs. Splitters

Unanswered Questions

Chapter 11: Untangling the Vines

Glossary
Index