📗 Libro en inglés THE GENETIC BOOK OF THE DEAD

From one of the world s great science writers a book that explores the deepest principles of evolutionary history In this groundbreaking new approach to the evolution of all life Richard Dawkins shows how the body behaviour and genes of every living creature can be read as a book an archive of the worlds of its ancestors A perfectly camouflaged desert lizard has a desiccated landscape of sand and stones painted on its back Its skin can be read as a description of ancient deserts in which its ancestors survived and before that of the worlds of its more remote ancestors a genetic book of the dead But such descriptions are more than skin deep The fine chisels of Darwinian natural selection carve their way through the very warp and woof of the body into every biochemical nook and corner into every cell of every living creature A zoologist of the future presented with a hitherto unknown animal will be able to reconstruct the worlds that shaped its ancestors to read its unique book of the dead The book is filled with fascinating examples of the power of Darwinian natural selection to build exquisite perfection paradoxically accompanied by what look like gross blunders Along the way Dawkins dismantles influential criticisms of the gene s eye vie