In the blink of an eye

"In the blink of an eye" by Andrew Parker.

This is a very enjoyable book. In this book, the author proposed a new mechanism for evolution and a new theory for Cambrian explosion. The term Cambrian explosion refers to the relatively rapid rate of evolution (an order of magnitude faster than that in other periods) and the sudden emergence of all phyla of animals we know today. The Cambrian explosion was considered as a challenge to Evolutionism by Darwin himself and is subject to fierce debate today.

In this book, the author first noted that the diversity of diurnal animals is ten times greater than that of the nocturnal animals and that the evolution is much slower for animals living in caves than that for those living on the ground (cave animals from different regions often look identical even they have been separated by millions of years while animals on the ground may turn into different species after just thousands of years of separation). Perhaps, the need to adapt to light increases the diversity.
Then, he noted that the first eyes were evolved on trilobites just before Cambrian and that almost all Cambrian animals were covered by hard shells. From here, he proposed a theory of rapid evolution in Cambrian period. Basically, before there is an eye, a predator cannot detect a prey unless the prey send out a signal, being it sound or smell, or accidentally moved too close to the predator. Hence, whether an animal would be eaten was decided more by probability than any other thing. After the eyes were evolved, a predator could easily detect the prey. The survival of the prey species (i.e., almost all species) was at risk. Hence, it gave a tremendous evolution pressure to the preys to develop a countermeasure. Such fierce arm race accelerated evolution and the rest is history.

Overall speaking, I like this book. The author did a good job lead the readers going through his arguments step by step. While the author cited a lot of fossil and modern evidence, the main gist, in general, was buried in all the details. The only complain I have is that the author tended to spend too much time discussing his own papers which are not always relevant to this book.