Swimming in Stone: The Amazing Gogo Fossils of the Kimberley

In this amazing story, Long chronicles the history of the sites and takes the reader on a journey of adventure, human endeavor and intrigue with insights into the very nature of scientific study.

When David Attenborough filmed his ground-breaking series Life on Earth in 1978, he chose one place in the world to demonstrate the early evolution of fishes: Gogo. Gogo, in the wild Kimberley district of Western Australia, is one of the world’s most significant fossil sites because it shows 375 million – year old fishes preserved in stunning three-dimensional preservation. These fossils provide a rare window into the anatomy of primitive fishes at the critical stage when fishes where starting to evolve into the first land animals, the line ultimately leading to us humans. Yet, despite being such an important fossil site, it has had a mysterious and checkered history of discovery. Written by palaeontologist John Long, who has spent over 20 years searching and working the Gogo sites, Swimming in Stone tells the amazing stories of the people who discovered the fossils.

320 p. : ill., maps, ports. ; 20 cm. #0418/R/0921