controversial thesis was that if the history of life were replayed over again, human level intelligence would prove unlikely to ever arise again. In his review, the biologist Richard Dawkins wrote that, "Wonderful Life is a beautifully written and deeply muddled book. To make unputdownable an intricate, technical account of the anatomies of worms, and other inconspicuous denizens of a half-billion-year-old sea, is a literary tour-de-force. But the theory that Stephen Gould wrings out of his fossils is a sorry mess." The evolutionary biologist Ernst Mayr argued that Gould, "made such contingencies a major theme in Wonderful Life, and I have come to the conclusion that here he may be largely right." Biologist John Maynard Smith wrote, "I agree with Gould that evolution is not in general predictable. … Although I agree with Gould about contingency, I find the problem of progress harder. … I do think that progress has happened, although I find it hard to define precisely what I mean." Philosopher Michael Ruse wrote that, "Wonderful Life was the best book written by the late Stephen Jay Gould, paleontologist and popular science writer. It is … a thrilling story that Gould tells in a way that no one else could equal." Some of the anatomical reconstructions cited by Gould were soon challenged as being incorrect, most notably Simon Conway Morris' 1977 reconstruction of Hallucigenia. Conway Morris' reconstruction was, "so peculiar, so hard to imagine as an efficiently working beast" Gould speculated that Hallucigenia might be "a complex appendage of a larger creature, still undiscovered." It was later brought to light by paleontologists Lars Ramskold and Hou Xianguang that Conway Morris' reconstruction was inverted upside down, and likely belonged to the modern phylum Onychophora. The ultimate theme of the book is still being debated among evolutionary biologists today. See also March of Progress (illustration) References External links Wonderful Life - by Stephen Jay Gould Of tongue worms, velvet worms, and water bears - by Stephen Jay Gould The Cambrian "Explosion": Slow-fuse or Megatonnage? - by Simon Conway Morris Showdown on the Burgess Shale - by Simon Conway Morris and Stephen Jay Gould The disparity of the Burgess Shale arthropod fauna and the limits of cladistic analysis - by Stephen Jay Gould Wonderful Life (1989) - Unofficial Stephen Jay Gould Archive The Ediacaran experiment - by Stephen Jay Gould 1989 non-fiction books American non-fiction books Books about evolution Books by