Join us for an evening with Anthony J. Martin as he discusses Life Sculpted: Tales of the Animals, Plants, and Fungi That Drill, Break, and Scrape to Shape the Earth. Registration requested.
About the Book
Meet the menagerie of life-forms that dig, crunch, bore, and otherwise reshape our planet. Did you know that elephants dig ballroom-sized caves alongside volcanoes? Or that parrotfish chew coral reefs and poop out sandy beaches? Or that our planet once hosted a five-ton dinosaur-crunching alligator cousin? In fact, almost since its fascinating start, life was boring. More than a billion years ago, bacteria, algae, and fungi began breaking down rocks in oceans, a role they still perform today. About a half billion years ago, animal ancestors began drilling, scraping, gnawing, and breaking rocky seascapes. In turn, their descendants crunched through the materials of life itself—shells, wood, and bones. Today, such “bioeroders” continue to shape our planet—from the bacteria that devour our teeth to the mighty moon snail, always hunting for food, as evidenced by tiny snail-made boreholes in clams and in other moon snails. Following the crumbs of lichens, sponges, worms, clams, snails, octopi, barnacles, sea urchins, termites, beetles, fishes, dinosaurs, crocodilians, birds, elephants, and (of course) humans, Life Sculpted reveals how bioerosion expanded with the tree of life, becoming an essential part of ecosystem functioning while reshaping the face of our planet. With vast knowledge and no small amount of whimsy, Anthony J. Martin uses paleontology, biology, and geology to reveal the awesome power of life’s chewing force. He provokes us to think deeply about the past and present of bioerosion while also considering how knowledge of this history might aid us in mitigating and adapting to climate change in the future. Yes, Martin concedes, sometimes life can be hard—but life also makes everything less hard every day.
Praise for Life Sculpted
“With an equal dose of wit and scholarship, Martin turns what is literally a boring topic—how animals and other species drill and chew through rock, bone, and wood—into an epic tale of evolution. Fun and readable, yet academically rigorous, this book shows why Martin is one of the finest popularizers of paleontology today, and one of my favorite science writers.”
—Steve Brusatte, New York Times–bestselling author of The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs
“A truly original cracker of a book. Martin is one of the world’s top experts in trace fossils, and his lifelong experience doing primary research in this field shows clearly. The scientific information is first-class and highly informative, but the prose is also beautiful and refreshingly expressive. Martin has a real mastery of words that is rare. Enthralling.”
—John A. Long, author of The Dawn of the Deed
“A bewildering array of life-forms break, scrape, and mold our planet to their own ends, from elephants digging caves by volcanoes to bacteria breaking down rocks in the oceans. Bioerosion is a distinct area of science, covering paleontology, biology, and geology. It’s also testament to how life adapts to change, something relevant in the current Anthropocene era.”
—The Bookseller
“Much of Martin’s discussion involves ichnology, the study of trace fossils, such as tracks, burrows, bite marks, holes. He describes how snails drill into their prey, pine beetles munch trees, otters use rocks as tools to bust clam shells, and stingrays emit high pressure jets of water to expose quarry hiding in sediment. Martin’s writing is witty, rich in facts (the teeth of beavers are enhanced with iron), and spiced with eclectic references, such as the films Jurassic Park, Alien, and Jaws, authors ranging from Aeschylus to H.P. Lovecraft, and TV shows House Hunters and Breaking Bad. Mingling geology, biology, and paleontology, Martin has fashioned a unique and engaging portrait of the earth’s many movers and shakers.”
—Booklist
About the Author
Anthony J. Martin is teaching professor in the Department of Environmental Sciences at Emory University, where he has taught classes in geology, paleontology, and environmental sciences for more than thirty years. He has a PhD in geology, and his research specialty is ichnology, the study of modern and ancient traces caused by animal behavior, such as tracks, burrows, and borings. He is the author of numerous books, including Dinosaurs without Bones, The Evolution Underground, and Tracking the Golden Isles.
Sign up for our newsletter to keep up with what's new at Georgia Center for the Book