Required Reading

The following transcriptions were taken from two of the books that my class was required to read for Geology 103 with the illustrious Dick Smosna. The passages really stood out to me as I read them, and so I wanted to record and share them, especially since I will be selling the books back to the bookstore shortly (and only receiving 50% of what I paid for them so that the bookstore can resell them in January for 150% of what they bought them back from me for).

Text Transcript #1: Raptor Red, by Robert T. Bakker

p. 112-133; August: Famine and the Wing Shadow

To the deinonychs and the Utahraptor, the situationis life or death. To the dactyl, it’s a game.

The dactyl climbs to five hundred feet to survey the scene he’s created. He likes intervening in the lives of predators—it amuses him. He’s spent all his waking hours amusing himself, ever since that day in the spring when he decided he would not take a mate.

The great white dactyl is a very special case. He’s sixty years old, healthy, fit, his senses keen. He’s observed many generations of raptors in their struggles to raise families. He’s helped raise dozens of broods of his own species, with the help of five mates, all now dead.

Dactyls live longer than dinosaurs—a general advantage of life on the wing. If it survives the dangers of youth, a yound adult dactyl can look forward to thirty or forty years, average lifespan. This particular dactyl is an old timer even by pterodactyl standards. And he has decided this year that he has had enough. He intends never to breed again. He’s a biological oddity—a widower who is content.

The hidden hand of natural selection is nearly everywhere. Every time a dinosaur makes a choice, it affects its reproductive success, the beast is playing the evolution game. Every time a bird helps her sister or her daughter or her granddaughter raise a brood, the act is recorded in the book of genetic success. Every time a turtle seeks a mate, the deed affects the standing of the turle’s genes in the Darwinian playoff.

But the old dactyl has bowed out of the Great Game. He’s ended his own contribution to his gene pool entirely. He doesn’t breed himself, and he doesn’t help his kin to breed. In fact, he avoids all others of his species. He’s outlived his Darwinian usefulness, and he’s enjoying it immensely.

Text Transcript #2: The Beak of the Finch, by Jonathan Weiner

p. 289; Part Three: G.O.D., Chapter 20. The Metaphysical Crossbeak

In this way we have become the evolving animal. We are now evolving rapidly ourselves, and we are driving evolution everywhere around us. We have learned how to make Darwin’s process run faster for us than it does for any other species on the planet—except perhaps the bacteria, with their flying rings of plasmids and ten-minute generation times. The tragedy of our success is what we are doing to the rest of creation, which evolves more slowly.

Our own tenure has been brief— a few million years. A species that can survive only by causing upheaval around it is always in danger of extinction, like a tribe that lives for battle. At the moment the whole planet is like a closed pinecone that we alone with our twisted beaks have contrived to open, that that there are more of our kind than of any other bird in the forest. Yet rapid accumulation of change is not always progress, and forward motion is not always an advance.

p. 292; Part Three: G.O.D., Chapter 20. The Metaphysical Crossbeak

Natural selection turns upon the profit of the individual. What is good for the individual is usually good for the flock. But when the needs of the individual clash with the needs of the flock, it is the individual that triumphs, even if this private success leads to the downfall of the flock.

This entry was posted in Excerpts, Notes, School and tagged , , , , , . Bookmark the permalink.

One Response to Required Reading

  1. Hi, you don’t know me…but I’m pretty sure I have this class with you.
    I saw your post in Liz’s journal.
    Beak of a Finch: Part 3: Worst. Read. Ever.

Comments are closed.