Hoekstra, Hopi E.

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The Evolution Ringmaster RichardDawkinsThe Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution2009Simon and SchusterNew York, NY, USA470 pp. $30.00 

Leading Edge
Book ReviewIn 1871, P.T. Barnum launched the 
“Great Traveling Museum, Menagerie, 
Caravan, and Hippodrome,” a year later 
adding the moniker “The Greatest Show 
on Earth.” Ever the showman, Barnum 
was renowned for promoting hoaxes, the 
most celebrated of which was the Feejee 
Mermaid, a mummified specimen boast-
ing the head and torso of a monkey and 
the rear end of a fish. Such a ridiculous 
creature, what Richard Dawkins would 
refer to as a “fishkey,” half fish and half 
monkey, is precisely what many creation-
ists clamor for. “If monkeys descended 
from fish,” they say, “then show me an 
intermediate form!”
In his latest book, The Greatest Show 
on Earth, Dawkins points out the absur-
dity of this expectation. First, modern 
species are not descended from other 
modern species. Rather, they share a 
common ancestor some time in the past. 
Second, there is no reason to think that 
this ancestor would be perfectly inter-
mediate in form between its descendant 
species. With a flair for analogy and 
unique explanatory abilities, Dawkins 
confronts such creationist myths one by 
one. He is an entertainer but, unlike Bar-
num, he sticks to the facts.
Although Dawkins carefully disman-
tles the underpinnings of creationist 
thinking, he is in fact uncharacteristically 
restrained. This is not the unrelenting 
attack on religion that made his previous 
book, The God Delusion, controversial. 
Instead, inspired by the bicentennial of 
Darwin’s birth, Dawkins harnesses the 
wonders of the natural world to lay out 
the evidence for evolution. For Dawkins, 
the marvels of biological diversity—from 
the origami-like folding of developing 
embryos to the seaweed-grazing marine 
iguanas of the Galapagos Islands—both 
ask and answer evolutionary questions. 
In so doing, Dawkins covers vast terri-
tory with crystal-clear scientific thinking 
and wonderful prose, the Dawkins hall-
mark.
The book starts semantically: what 
is a theory? Although not the sexiest of 
entrées, this single word “theory” belies 
a central confusion about evolution, and 
so it must be done. In the 1980 presi-
dential campaign, Ronald Reagan, when 
questioned about his views on evolution, 
responded “Well, it’s a theory…it is a sci-
entific theory only…” This lack of aware-
ness (or political tap-dancing) highlights 
a key dichotomy in the usage of the term: 
the general public uses theory to mean 
speculation or conjecture, whereas sci-
entists define it as a hypothesis con-
firmed by observation or experiment and 
accounting for the known facts.
Unlike many of his previous books, 
which assume the fact of evolution, here 
Dawkins compiles, piece by piece, the 
evidence for it. Dawkins follows Dar-
win in starting with the analogy of our 
own species shaping varieties of crops, 
breeds of dogs, and economically impor-
tant traits of cattle. Next, Dawkins leads 
us to more natural “agents of selec-
tive breeding,” like pollinators selecting 
plants or females selecting showy male 
traits. Finally, Dawkins reasons that we 
do not need to invoke a choosing agent 
at all, but rather “the choice can be made 
automatically” by surviving to reproduce 
or failing to reproduce. This, Dawkins 
recognizes, is the triumph of Darwin’s 
genius: the elimination of a teleological 
view of the natural world.
In the 150 years since the publication 
of On the Origin of Species, the evidence 
has continued to mount. In 1859, the fossil 
record was still poorly described, but just 
2 years after Darwin’s publication, the first 
clear transitional fossil was discovered, a 
complete specimen of 150-million-year-
old Archae opteryx, representing an inter-
mediate between birds and dinosaurs. 
Since then, the fossil record has yielded 
many examples of key transitions in the 
origin of major taxa: tetrapods, mammals, 
and whales being three textbook exam-
ples. Similarly, the fossil record of humans 
has proven extraordinarily rich. None were 
known during Darwin’s life, although he 
correctly predicted that they would be 
most abundant in Africa. Here again we 
have transitional forms. Even in the few 
weeks since the publication of Dawkins’ 
book, a trove of new hominid fossils has 
been described. Although Dawkins argues 
that fossils are like thousands of “spy 
cameras” that just provide bonus informa-
tion to the already airtight case for evolu-
tion, he treats the fossil record with rigor 
because it is a favorite target of creationist 
misinformation.
In addition to fossil organisms, evi-
dence for evolution also can be found in 
what can be thought of as “fossil parts”—
vestigial organs. Whales retain remnants 
of a pelvic girdle as a testament to their 
land-dwelling ancestry, and humans an 
appendix from their herbivorous ances-
tors. In addition, because evolution has no 
foresight, we are also riddled with major 
design flaws. Dawkins vividly illustrates 
this point by personal experience: the 
day after Darwin’s 200th birthday, Dawk-
ins describes donning orange coveralls 
and stark white boots to join a team of 
anatomists dissecting a giraffe, recently 
deceased, from a nearby zoo. The focus 
was, naturally, part of the giraffe’s neck 
anatomy. Dawkins observed his col-
leagues painstakingly dissect out the 
recurrent laryngeal nerve, and they were 
The Evolution Ringmaster
The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution
Richard Dawkins
New York, NY, USA: Simon and Schuster (2009).
470 pp. $30.00454 Cell 139, October 30, 2009 ©2009 Elsevier Inc.
probably the first people to do so since 
Richard Owen (Darwin’s most promi-
nent foe) in 1837. This is a marvel of bad 
design. The nerve, which links the larynx 
to the brain, takes a detour of almost 15 
feet through the thorax. Why? Because 
evolution is not a simple matter of opti-
mal engineering; rather, natural selection 
modifies or builds on what has come 
before. The laryngeal nerve descended 
from the brachial arches of our fish-like 
ancestors and as such is constrained by 
the position of the aorta, also ultimately 
derived from the brachial arch. As Dawk-
ins notes, similar evolutionary imperfec-
tions abound.
Dawkins reminds us that evolution-
ary biologists are like “detectives who 
come late to the scene of a crime,” and, 
although we were not able to witness the 
crime itself, the evidence we can gather, 
such as fossils, vestiges, and DNA, is 
often much more reliable than any eye-
witness account. He does, though, stray 
from this analogy to present cases of 
rapid evolution either in the wild or in the 
lab in which we can witness evolution-
ary change in real time. One need only extrapolate this over thousands or mil-
lions of years to understand how larger 
changes can accumulate. In fact, Dawk-
ins devotes a whole chapter to dating 
the geological record, recognizing that 
the time dimension is a key component 
of our understanding of evolution.
My sole quibble with the book is that 
Dawkins gives rather short shrift to the 
latest genomic data, some showing the 
precise molecular details of how, what 
Darwin referred to as, “endless forms 
most beautiful” evolved. We now know the 
genetic switches that control basic body 
plans. We know mutations responsible for 
variation in wild populations of butterflies, 
fish, and mammals. Dawkins steers clear, 
perhaps mindful that the book is already 
470 pages long and quickly could become 
an unwieldy encyclopedia were he to foray 
into molecular territory. I think, however, 
this is an unfortunate oversight because it 
gives the impression that we have simply 
been filling in the gaps left by Darwin—
with, for example, further exploration of 
the fossil record or description of develop-
ing embryos—rather than moving ahead 
into areas that Darwin could not have even Cell 139imagined. And the most remarkable fact of 
all? That Darwin’s theory holds up when 
spoken in the language of DNA.
Why, one may wonder, does this book 
need to be written at all? And, Dawkins, 
I should note, is not alone in having the 
impulse to make the case for evolution: 
Jerry Coyne’s explicitly titled Why Evo-
lution is True appeared earlier this year. 
Polls suggest that 40% of Americans are 
tried and true anti-evolution creationists, 
and the numbers, Dawkins claims, are 
not much better in Britain or the rest of 
Europe. In principle, this book is for them. 
Yet, they do not appear to be Dawkins’ 
target as he makes little attempt to draw 
in his opponents.
But those who do read Dawkins—
perhaps those who are undecided or 
uncertain or who accept evolution but 
are unsure how to argue their case—
will be awed by the majesty of nature, 
wonderfully entertained, and brilliantly 
informed. Even well-trained biologists 
will come away with a new (or renewed) 
appreciation of both the power of natural 
selection and the extraordinary biologi-
cal diversity it has generated.
Hopi E. Hoekstra1,*
1Department of Organismic and 
 Evolutionary Biology, Harvard University, 
Cambridge, MA 02138, USA
*Correspondence: hoekstra@oeb.harvard.edu
DOI 10.1016/j.cell.2009.10.013, October 30, 2009 ©2009 Elsevier Inc. 455


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The Evolution Ringmaster RichardDawkinsThe Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution2009Simon and SchusterNew York, NY, USA470 pp. $30.00

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