Each image delivers a rich, immersive visual experience—and the result is breathtaking. There’s a herd of giant sauroposeidons, with their impossibly long necks, lumbering across the sun-drenched plains, a threatened velociraptor waving its wildly feathered arms, and more. Flipping through these pages is transports readers to Earth’s distant past. With informative text by science writer Kathy Wollard, it’s like a natural history museum but better—experience it for yourself!

    

    New findings are being made every year, and research is showing us exactly how these beasts looked and how they lived.Creatures illustrated and described include:Sabre tooth tigers and woolly mammothsGlyptodon – an armadillo as big as a VW Beetle carMegalodon – a monster 60 foot (18m) sharkWater King penguin – a red and grey penguin the size of a manOrnimegalonyx – a huge Cuban flightless owl, the largest owl that ever existed, at over 3 feet (1m) tallDeinotherium – a strange-looking and huge, elephant-like creature with tusks positioned on its lower jaw and curved, facing downwardsShort-nosed bear – a massive fearsome bear that kept North America human freeMegatherium – the giant sloth, as large as a modern elephantLess celebrated than the dinosaurs, the range of beasts is equally impressive, every one a scary, amazing creature that actually stalked the planet. Like the dinosaurs, these beasts are awe-inspiring in their variety, with amazing details not seen on animals today and in a wide variety of furs, feathers and colours, making for a stunning collection of illustrations.

    In this book, Stephen Shennan presents the latest research on the spread of farming by archaeologists, geneticists and other archaeological scientists. He shows that it resulted from a population expansion from present-day Turkey. Using ideas from the disciplines of human behavioural ecology and cultural evolution, he explains how this process took place. The expansion was not the result of 'population pressure' but of the opportunities for increased fertility by colonising new regions that farming offered. The knowledge and resources for the farming 'niche' were passed on from parents to their children. However, Shennan demonstrates that the demographic patterns associated with the spread of farming resulted in population booms and busts, not continuous expansion.

    Gorgeous watercolors accompany surprising, little-known, and fun-to-tell facts about dinosaur behavior, habits, and appearance, bringing these prehistoric creatures to life in a new way. This fascinating book will delight dinosaur fans, young and old.

    The Bronze Age represents the global emergence of a militarized society with a martial culture, materialized in a package of new efficient weapons that remained in use for millennia to come. Warfare became institutionalized and professionalized during the Bronze Age, and a new class of warriors made their appearance. Evidence for this development is reflected in the ostentatious display of weapons in burials and hoards, and in iconography, from rock art to palace frescoes. These new manifestations of martial culture constructed the warrior as a 'Hero' and warfare as 'Heroic'. The case studies, written by an international team of scholars, discuss these and other new aspects of Bronze Age warfare. Moreover, the essays show that warriors also facilitated mobility and innovation as new weapons would have quickly spread from the Mediterranean to northern Europe.

    Equally important was the development of a suite of new social practices, and an emphasis on descent, continuity and inheritance. These innovations set in train social processes that culminated with the construction of Stonehenge, the most remarkable surviving structure fromprehistoric Europe.Neolithic Britain provides an up to date, concise introduction to the period of British prehistory from c. 4000-2200 BCE. Written on the basis of a new appreciation of the chronology of the period, the result reflects both on the way that archaeologists write narratives of the Neolithic, and howNeolithic people constructed histories of their own. Incorporating new insights from the extraordinary pace of archaeological discoveries in recent years, a world emerges which is unfamiliar, complex and challenging, and yet played a decisive role in forging the landscape of contemporary Britain.Important recent developments have resulted in a dual realisation: firstly, highly focused research into individual site chronologies can indicate precise and particular time narratives; and secondly, this new awareness of time implies original insights about the fabric of Neolithic society, embracing matters of inheritance, kinship and social ties, and the 'descent' of cultural practices.Moreover, our understanding of Neolithic society has been radically affected by individual discoveries and investigative projects, whether in the Stonehenge area, on mainland Orkney, or in less well-known localities across the British Isles. The new perspective provided in this volume stems from agreater awareness of the ways in which unfolding events and transformations in societies depend upon the changing relations between individuals and groups, mediated by objects and architecture.This concise panorama into Neolithic Britain offers new conclusions and an academically-stimulating but accessible overview. It covers key material and social developments, and reflects on the nature of cultural practices, tradition, genealogy, and society across nearly two millennia.