Popular scientists have long told us that by looking at a fossilised bone we can tell whether it belongs to our ancestors. This is not possible. Fossils cannot answer scientific questions of ascent and descent. Scientists in the field are now using a new method, cladistics, to understand the fossil record.
In this book, Henry Gee, using cladistics, shows us how everything we thought we knew about evolution is wrong and reveals new truths about why fish evolved fingers, how dinosaurs evolved feathers long before they became birds and why, in the age-old debate, the egg came before the chicken.
