Vintage Books, 2000. Foxing at page edges, several creases to front cover.

A masterpiece of analysis and imagination, centreing on a sensational discovery in the field of palaeontology - the existence, in the Burgess Shale...of 530-million-year-old fossils unique in age, preservation and diversity...With skill and passion, Gould takes this mute collection of fossils and makes them speak to us. The result challenges some of our most cherished self-perceptions and urges a fundamental re-assessment of our place in the history of life on earth... Gould shows again that he is unique among evolutionists in the subtlety and depth of his thinking about the history of life... He weaves together three extraordinary themes - one palaeontological, one human, one theoretical and historical - as he discusses the discovery of the Burgess Shale, with its amazing, wonderfully preserved fossils - a time-capsule of the early Cambrian seas...