Okay so I could start this off the same way as everyone else, talking about how I expected this book to be boring when I first saw it but then soon found that I liked it, but honestly that would be more boring than the book was. And also because that would be a lie; I already knew what the book would be like because I read the back cover. But enough of that, when it actually came down to reading, I found the book fairly interesting, as the author Neil Shubin not only gave me new information, but also dispersed many of the common assumptions I made about geology and the science as a whole. Just one of these assumptions, I'll only give you one so as not to embarrass myself further from this first one, was that I naturally thought of paleontologists as very lucky people, who just went around digging holes in the ground hoping for a miracle. I'm not as ignorant to believe that was completely all to it, but I still was very blind as to the sheer amount of effort and thought needed to be put into an expedition. And in a lot of ways, paleontologists are much like most other scientists, where as they develop a hypothesis of what they think will happen or turn out, and then they research and find a way to prove it right or wrong. In between is a lot of other complicated things that frankly made me fall asleep quite a few times, but nonetheless is still important. One thing that I found very interesting was the fact that paleontologists can analyze rock and discover the time periods and eras particular rocks and fossils are formed in just by analyzing the layers, which opens up to a world of possibilities and questions. Can't say I'm thrilled for Chapter 2, but I don't want to burn the book yet so that's always a good thing.
Cheers,
Cameron Chear
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