The Dawn of the Deed: The Prehistoric Origins of Sex

Combining thoughtful science with sheer fun, this book is impossible to put down. The central, fascinating question asked by Long, a vertebrate paleontologist at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County (The Rise of Fishies), is, when did sexual reproduction first occur? Long, who played a role in discovering the oldest example of an embryo in the fossil record (380 million years old), is well positioned to answer the question. He looks at evidence from the fossil record, examines mating patterns and sexual preferences of living animals, and discusses the attributes of various sexual organs (including the size and speed of ejaculations for males of many species). The book is far from prurient, even though it’s intriguing to hypothesize how 70-ton dinosaurs might have copulated. Long provides great insight into the process of science and makes the compelling case that understanding the history of sexual congress offers incontrovertible documentation of the evolutionary process. The only downside is that he raises two important questions, then gives them short shrift: why sexual reproduction evolved at all and the evolutionary explanation for homosexuality. Nonetheless, this book deserves wide attention. Agent: Margaret Gee. (Sept.)