On the Nature of Limbs: A Discourse.On the Nature of Limbs: A Discourse by Richard Owen; Ron Amundson; Brian K. Hall; RonAmundson; Kevin Padian; Mary P. Winsor; Jennifer CoggonReview by: By Michael K. RichardsonThe Quarterly Review of Biology, Vol. 84, No. 2 (June 2009), p. 199Published by: The University of Chicago PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/603486 .

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ANATOMY AND PHYSIOLOGY

On the Nature of Limbs: A Discourse.By Richard Owen; edited by Ron Amundson; preface byBrian K. Hall; introductory essays by Ron Amundson,Kevin Padian, Mary P. Winsor, and Jennifer Coggon.Chicago (Illinois): University of Chicago Press. $50.00(hardcover); $20.00 (paper). civ � 119 p. � 2 pl.;ill.; no index. ISBN: 978-0-226-64194-2 (hc); 978-0-226-64193-5 (pb). 2007.

Richard Owen's lecture of 1849 is presented herein facsimile, prefaced by a valuable series of inter-pretative essays by modern historians, philoso-phers, and evolutionary biologists. Owen was acomparative anatomist best known for his revisionof the concepts of homology and analogy, and forhis analysis of the Archetype—a common body planshared by all vertebrates.

On the Nature of Limbs completes Owen's radicalvision of a vertebrate skeleton made almost en-tirely of modified vertebrae. Even the skull andpaired appendages (paired fins and limbs) can berecognized, he says, as derivatives of a primitivesegment serially repeated along the body axis. Ac-cording to Owen, the occipital region of the skullis derived from the fourth vertebra of the series,and gives rise to the pectoral girdle in all speciesthat possess one. This leads him to conclude, forexample, that the human hands and arms areparts of the head. His arguments are not alwayseasy to follow, and indeed Limbs does not make foreasy reading. But, on balance, this book containsso many stimulating ideas that it is likely to beappreciated by modern evolutionary and develop-ment biologists, as well as by anyone interested inthe history and philosophy of science.

Michael K. Richardson, Institute of Biology, Lei-den University, Leiden, The Netherlands

DEVELOPMENT

Cortical Development: Genes and GeneticAbnormalities. Based on a symposium held in Lon-don, United Kingdom, 6–8 February 2007. NovartisFoundation Symposium, Volume 288.

Edited by Gregory Bock and Jamie Goode. Chichester(United Kingdom) and Hoboken (New Jersey): John Wiley& Sons. $160.00. xi � 289 p.; ill.; contributor andsubject indexes. ISBN: 978-0-470-06092-6. 2007.

This is a collection of invited papers, presented ata symposium on cortical development in 2007,which was chaired by John Parnavelas. The sympo-

sium focused on the dynamic molecular anatomyof cortical development and brought together aninternational group of leading researchers in thefield. Transcripts of question and answer periodsfollowing the talks as well as two general discussionsessions are also included.

This volume is a very important, albeit not an easyread, for all but the long-standing and most initiatedstudents of cortical development. The assembledwork represents cutting-edge research on the geneticand signaling mechanisms involved in cell specifica-tion, migration, axon outgrowth/target finding, anddendritic differentiation in cortical morphogenesis.However, the larger theoretical framework, directlyor indirectly addressed by many of the studiesherein, only emerges gradually. Papers by Rakic etal., O'Leary et al., Cholfin and Rubenstein, andKennedy et al. help reveal the long-standing com-peting hypothesis: Is cortical organization intrinsi-cally determined or following a “Protomap” in itsformation? Are afferents, particularly from thethalamus, determining cortical specification as inthe “Protocortex” idea or, is it sensory input thatinteracts with some basic genetic determinantto generate a “Self-Organizing Map”? Far fromconcluding the debate, the data shown here re-veal new layers of complexity. The discussionamong conference participants (and paper au-thors) illustrates how far the field has come in thelast 50 to 60 years and, yet, how far we still are fromgenerating answers that might be put into clinicaluse.

This volume would be well utilized as requiredreading in a graduate seminar. It also presents avaluable crash course in molecular genetic ad-vances for those of us who are working on thesystems or behavioral level of cerebral corticaldevelopment and/or are trying to build animalmodels for clinical disorders.

Christine F. Hohmann, Biology, Morgan StateUniversity, Baltimore, Maryland

CELL AND MOLECULAR BIOLOGY

RNA and DNA Editing: Molecular Mechanismsand Their Integration into Biological Systems.

Edited by Harold C. Smith. Hoboken (New Jersey):John Wiley & Sons. $150.00. xxiii � 426 p. � 12pl.; ill.; index. ISBN: 978-0-470-10991-5. 2008.

This volume is a collection of 16 chapters thatcover many of the diverse types of RNA and DNAmodification, fields that have been expandingrapidly in the past few years. The contributions

June 2009 199NEW BIOLOGICAL BOOKS

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