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Gorgon: Paleontology, Obsession, and the Greatest Catastrophe in Earth's History

Posted on: Friday, 6 May 2005, 03:00 CDT

Gorgon: Paleontology, Obsession, and the Greatest Catastrophe in Earth's History by Peter D. Ward. Viking, New York, NY. 257 pages; 2004; $27.95 (hardbound).

Gorgon is an amazing book, particularly for the acknowledgment of the second word in the subtitle-obsession. More than a few people have suggested that geologists are a bit crazy, especially those that scour the world's harshest environments in search of clues to the earth's history. Be it extremes of cold or heat; insects, snakes, and other living menaces; threats of being annihilated by volcanic eruption, crushed by falling rocks, or swept away by raging flood waters, geologists have placed themselves in extreme discomfort and sometimes deathly danger in their pursuit of knowledge. To many, this is obsession. Oh, we might romanticize it and call it a "magnificent obsession," a phrase shared by many who risk limb and life in sports, in warfare, in the arts, and in many other professions. What is often forgotten, especially in the afterglow of success and the notoriety that comes with it, is the costs, both physical and emotional. What sets this book apart is the candor with which Peter D. Ward speaks of these costs-to his family, especially.

But what is this obsession? I think there are two, actually: one common to all dedicated scientists and the other peculiar to a subset of them. The common connector is the desire to know, an unquenchable drive to make sense of the universe-or at least a small part of it. In this book, it is to understand the nature of the greatest extinction event in the history of the earth-that at the end of the Permian. The second is personal-the desire to make an important contribution, one that would earn recognition and respect. I think it safe to say that all great scientists share the first, but it is not true that all share the second, for many toil in anonymity and shun the spotlight. Here again, Ward provides an eloquent insight into the first, describing his own quest to place the Permian extinction in the light of his earlier contributions to the impact theory of the Cretaceous extinction, convinced that, contrary to the almost universally held belief that the Permian extinction was a gradual process, due to slow environmental change, this most deadly of extinctions was also a catastrophic event. However, by speaking personally of his own thoughts and feelings, we see that he is also motivated by a desire to "make his mark" in the world of science. It is refreshing to read of his personal ambitions, for, no doubt, many others have been motivated by the same desire for personal acclaim but have managed to submerge any mention of this in their own writing.

The book is also, of course, a story of scientific discovery. It tells how evidence is gathered slowly and patiently, how logic and reason assemble from that evidence an explanation-the proverbial hypothesis, and how further evidence is sought for confirmation. It is an account of the "scientific method" in operation in real time, which means in this case, spread over a decade. It is a story of working in the Karoo region of South Africa through one of the most turbulent times in that region's history-the fall of apartheid. It is the story of hostile weather (both hot and cold), hostile vegetation, hostile insects and ticks, and nasty, highly poisonous puff adders. It is also a story of teamwork and conflict, even a bit of machismo between two scientists. And it is the story of the natural discipline of science-that hypotheses must be tested, data confirmed, and experiments replicated, necessitating repeated trips to resample some sites.

What was the nature of the Permian extinction? Was it fast or was it slow? The answer, like so many in science, is not a single, simple statement. Yes, it was quite fast, certainly faster than the millions of years over which it was once thought to take place. The time scale was in the hundreds of thousands of years-perhaps toward the lower end of that. But it was not instantaneous by any means. Perhaps the evidence of the Karoo points to multiple impacts of extraterrestrial bodies. The telltale isotopic evidence of impact- iridium-was not found. Yet the time frame of the extinction is short enough to disallow almost any normal climatic or environmental change. Catastrophic it must be.

If such a catastrophe has happened at least twice in the history of the earth (at the end of the Permian and at the end of the Cretaceous), then might it happen again? Ward speculates about this near the end of the book. His answer should make the reader stop and think a moment, and perhaps appreciate the world just a little bit more.

John Ernissee

Clarion University of Pennsylvania

Clarion, Pennsylvania

Copyright HELDREF PUBLICATIONS May/Jun 2005

Source: Rocks and Minerals

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