Volume 27, Number 18 · November 20, 1980
In an Evolutionary Crucible
By Stephen Jay Gould
Galapagos: Islands Lost in Time
by Tui De Roy Moore
Viking, 144 pp., $25.00
Isolated oceanic islands are the great natural laboratories of evolution. They enjoy this status for two rather different reasons. For the first, practicality, they provide nature's closest approach to the controlled and manageable conditions that every scientist tries to create in laboratory experiments. They are usually small, isolated, and tenanted by a unique and poorly or imperfectly developed fauna; the hurly-burly of a rich continental community of plant and animal life, or 'biota,' yields to tractable complexity—nature is never simple.
Review, 2113 words
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