… but here is a book that is prepared to be heterodox, and not before time. So what is it all about?
Even among mammals, let alone the entire Tree of Life, humans represent one minute twig of a vast (and largely fossilized) arborescence. So, it would be very poor form were we to demand center stage. Nor is that my intension. Every living species is a linear descendant of an immense string of now-vanished ancestors, but evolution itself is the reverse of linear. Rather it is endlessly exploratory, probing the vast spaces of biological hyperspace. Indeed this book is a celebration of how our world is (and was) populated by a riot of forms, a coruscating tapestry of life.
