cover image The Eternal Trail: A Tracker Looks at Evolution

The Eternal Trail: A Tracker Looks at Evolution

Martin Lockley, M. G. Lockley. Basic Books, $26 (352pp) ISBN 978-0-7382-0165-8

Dinosaur footprints and other fossilized tracks are ""the sheet music of the biosphere,"" writes University of Colorado geologist Lockley (Tracking Dinosaurs) in this uneven mix of science and mysticism. Lockley's professional expertise lies in interpreting fossilized traces and tracks; the best parts of this volume ably describe the process of drawing inferences from prints, fossil and otherwise. Were the odd tracks in South Korean rocks left by baby brontosaurs? Do Bigfoot's alleged tracks prove him (a) not a hoax and (b) a recently extinct giant ape? Lockley, guardedly, answers ""yes"" to all three questions. He also provides modest insight into the world's small community of trackers--those scientists who study footprints. But readers expecting a short, reliable course in fossils and feet might be taken aback by the author's embrace of non-scientific beliefs. For Lockley, biological evolution has a spiritual goal, ""hands and feet are the mirrors of the soul,"" and ""we might infer from their foot shape that ancient Celts were more intuitive and mystical, whereas Saxons [were] more practical and down to earth."" Lockley's overall thesis amounts to a decidedly non-Darwinian view of life: he believes that a ""cyclic pattern of ascending and descending forces... characterize the growth cycle of all individuals, species, and larger groups,"" a pattern that points human beings toward ""cosmic consciousness."" Arguing for more research into palm-reading, he asks, ""Why should minuscule genes tell us more about ourselves than our entire hands?"" (Ask any geneticist.) Some readers will welcome Lockley's sincere (and well-footnoted) attempts to link his special skills to his spiritual hopes; others will deplore his refusal to distinguish between testable and untestable hypotheses, ""biosphere and noosphere,"" paleontology, anthropology and religion. (Sept.)