"Gorgon" by Peter Ward

Gorgon: Paleontology, Obsession, and the Greatest Catastrophe in Earth's History (Viking Books)

The "greatest catastrophe" of the book's title is the mass extinction that closed the Permian Period wiping out more than 90 percent of all species, including the emblematic gorgonopsids. A grand event that has inspired grand hypotheses and grandiose claims, the end-Permian problem is a classic scientific conflict that is at its peak right now. Peter Ward, a prime figure in this conflict, presents a visceral, brooding memoir of his pathbreaking work on end-Permian rocks in South Africa's desolate Karoo country. His gothic fusion of landscape, geography, paleontologic holocaust and the experience of fieldwork does not spare his inner joys and anguish. He also presents a rock-solid exposition of Earth science that includes his novel theory of the Permian extinction, published in this week's Science. "Gorgon" is a classic about the scientific life, geologic division. I give it five stars. More books