Book picks similar to
Dinosaurs of the British Isles by Dean R. Lomax


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Crow Smarts: Inside the Brain of the World's Brightest Bird


Pamela S. Turner - 2016
    Why do crows have this ability? What does the crow know and what does it tell us about brain size, the evolution of intelligence, and just who is the smartest creature on the planet? In the latest addition to the Scientists in the Field series, the creators of The Frog Scientist take us to a beautiful Pacific island, where a lively cast of both crows and scientists is waiting to amuse and enlighten us.

Jasper's Story: Saving Moon Bears


Jill Robinson - 2013
    The farmers extracted the bile from Jasper's body and sold it to be used in traditional medicines. It's a horrific practice and conducted on thousands of moon bears each year. But now Jasper has the chance to be free and live a life away from pain and torture. In 2000, Animals Asia, an animal welfare organization, rescued Jasper and other captive moon bears, taking them to its Moon Bear Rescue Centre. Here veterinarians attended to the bears' wounds, hoping to give them some chance of a peaceful existence in the animal sanctuary. But after so many years of abuse Jasper's wounds, both physical and mental, are extensive. Can Jasper mend his body and mind and finally enjoy the life he was meant to live?

Ten Million Aliens: A Journey Through the Entire Animal Kingdom


Simon Barnes - 2013
    It's weirder than we are capable of imagining. And we're all in it together: humans, blue whales, rats, birds of paradise, ridiculous numbers of beetles, molluscs the size of a bus, the sexual gladiators of slugs, bdelliod rotifers who haven't had sex for millions of years and creatures called water bears: you can boil them, freeze them and fire them off into space without killing themWe're all part of the animal kingdom, appearing in what Darwin called 'endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful'. In this breathtakingly audacious book Simon Barnes has brought us all together, seeking not what separates us but what unites us. He takes us white-water rafting through the entire animal kingdom in a book that brings in deep layers of arcane knowledge, the works of Darwin and James Joyce, Barnes's own don't-try-this-at-home adventures in the wild, David Attenborough and Sherlock Holmes.

Inside Outside


Anne-Margot Ramstein - 2017
    A spelunker descends into a wide and glittering cavern while fellow explorers cluster around a crack in the earth. Fire-red ants march busily around their anthill, oblivious of a hungry anteater waiting above. A wordless look at the concept of inside and outside.

Til Death We Do Part


Bruno Beaches - 2021
    Through decades of quiet dedication and single-minded devotion he has achieved the successes one strives for in life, both with his family and career. Close to retirement and to sitting back and enjoying the fruits of a successful career and marriage, a malicious spurious complaint at work should have no material consequences on his life, but it starts a domino effect, and before long he finds himself shockingly dismissed, divorced, without a home, and with a criminal record. This story explores a convoluted tragic journey of divorce, rich with emotion, loss, betrayal, revenge and confusion. Along the way it explores the dynamics of what makes a relationship weak and vulnerable, or strong and resolute. It’s not a miserable story, but one of resilience, hope, and true love. It is told with an immense depth of feeling, insight, humour and faith, and there are many truly surprising twists and turns as the story unfolds.

Reading the Rocks: The Autobiography of the Earth


Marcia Bjornerud - 2005
    But to a geologist, stones are richly illustrated narratives, telling gothic tales of cataclysm and reincarnation. For more than four billion years, in beach sand, granite, and garnet schists, the planet has kept a rich and idiosyncratic journal of its past. Fulbright Scholar Marcia Bjornerud takes the reader along on an eye-opening tour of Deep Time, explaining in elegant prose what we see and feel beneath our feet. Both scientist and storyteller, Bjornerud uses anecdotes and metaphors to remind us that our home is a living thing with lessons to teach. She shows how our planet has long maintained a delicate balance, and how the global give-and-take has sustained life on Earth through numerous upheavals. But with the rapidly escalating effects of human beings on their home planet, that cosmic balance is being threatened -- and the consequences may be catastrophic. Containing a glossary and detailed timescale, as well as vivid descriptions and historic accounts, Reading the Rocks is literally a history of the world, for all friends of the Earth.

The Parrot's Lament, and Other True Tales of Animal Intrigue, Intelligence, and Ingenuity


Eugene Linden - 1999
    An orangutan picks a lock to let himself out of his zoo enclosure and two elephants adopt a tag-team strategy to keep their handlers from putting them back into theirs. In The Parrot's Lament, noted environmentalist Eugene Linden offers more than one hundred true anecdotes about animal acts of cooperation, heroism, escape--even tales of deception or manipulation of human beings. Drawing on the first-person experiences of veterinarians, field biologists, researchers, and trainers, Linden has compiled a warmly entertaining and powerfully persuasive argument for animal consciousness that, while not human, far exceeds what humans usually grant animals. Scientifically sound and emotionally compelling, The Parrot's Lament contains remarkable stories that are sure to resonate with animal lovers, turning skeptics everywhere into believers.

Sky & Telescope's Pocket Sky Atlas


Roger W. Sinnott - 2006
    Included are extra close-up charts of the Orion Nebula, Pleiades, Virgo Galaxy Cluster, and Large Magellanic Cloud.

How to Build a Dinosaur: Extinction Doesn't Have to Be Forever


Jack Horner - 2009
    In movies, in novels, in comic strips, and on television, we’ve all seen dinosaurs—or at least somebody’s educated guess of what they would look like. But what if it were possible to build, or grow, a real dinosaur, without finding ancient DNA? Jack Horner, the scientist who advised Steven Spielberg on Jurassic Park, and a pioneer in bringing paleontology into the twenty-first century, teams up with the editor of The New York Times’s Science Times section to reveal exactly what’s in store. In the 1980s, Horner began using CAT scans to look inside fossilized dinosaur eggs, and he and his colleagues have been delving deeper ever since. At North Carolina State University, Mary Schweitzer has extracted fossil molecules—proteins that survived 68 million years—from a Tyrannosaurus rex fossil excavated by Horner. These proteins show that T. rex and the modern chicken are kissing cousins. At McGill University, Hans Larsson is manipulating a chicken embryo to awaken the dinosaur within: starting by growing a tail and eventually prompting it to grow the forelimbs of a dinosaur. All of this is happening without changing a single gene. This incredible research is leading to discoveries and applications so profound they’re scary in the power they confer on humanity. How to Build a Dinosaur is a tour of the hot rocky deserts and air-conditioned laboratories at the forefront of this scientific revolution.

Songs and Portobellos


M.A. McCormack - 2015
    Songs and Portobellos is a magical story that captures the creativity and clarity of perception that young people possess.The book centres on the development of teenagers Conor and Melanie during the summer of 1967 and explores the influences that bring them to understand their uniqueness.By the end of the summer they have transcended the ordinary, discovered who they are and determined what they stand for.

Take Two


Mia Masters - 2019
    and the fact that they like to have threesomes and share women. They always insist it's only all about her pleasure, and it is, until they share Mallory.During the mind-blowing night they spend together, Mallory gives herself over and enjoys every moment of them sharing her curves. But she also notices that the childhood friends' love-hate relationship might be more love than they're letting on, whether either of them realizes it or not.She tells herself it's not her mess to untangle. This was just one night of forbidden fun at a party they were hosting. But she can't stop thinking about it. Their hands and skilled tongues had taken her body to heights she never even imagined.And there's definitely no forgetting when a little pink line appears on her pregnancy test a month later. As they reunite and their emotional bond fans the flames of the physical, she begins to wonder how she'll tell them she's pregnant and how they'll take the news. Which one is the father and how will that affect their blossoming relationship? And can she help them recognize and deal with the fact that they're as much in love with each other as they are with her?Will the surprise of a secret baby lead to even more revelations?And can these three deal together with parenting, coming out in Hollywood, and whatever else life throws their way, forever?Take Two is a full length standalone secret baby, Father's Day, coming out, MMF bisexual ménage novel of approximately 70,000 words. No cheating. No cliffhangers. Originally published in 2019 as 2 Celebrity Daddies by Ryan Ramsay, this is a fully revised and expanded edition in which R. Ryan has partnered with Mia Masters, master of MMF ménage romance, to bring you steamy bisexual goodness!

Superheavy: Making and Breaking the Periodic Table


Kit Chapman - 2019
    The science of element discovery is a truly fascinating field, and is constantly rewriting the laws of chemistry and physics as we know them. Superheavy is the first book to take an in-depth look at how synthetic elements are discovered, why they matter and where they will take us. From the Cold War nuclear race to the present day, scientists have stretched the periodic table to 118 elements. They have broken the rules of the periodic table, rewriting the science we're taught in school, and have the potential to revolutionize our lives.Kit Chapman takes us back to the very beginning, with the creation of the atomic bomb. He tells the story of the major players, such as Ernest Lawrence who revolutionized the field of particle physics with the creation of the cyclotron; Yuri Oganessian, the guerilla scientist who opened up a new era of discovery in the field and is the only living scientists to have an element named after him; and Victor Ninov, the disgraced physicist who almost pulled off the greatest fraud in nuclear science. This book will bring us in a full circle back to Oak Ridge National Laboratory, where the first atomic bomb was developed, and that has more recently been an essential player in creating the new superheavy element 117.Throughout, Superheavy explains the complex science of element discovery in clear and easy-to-follow terms. It walks through the theories of atomic structure, discusses the equipment used and explains the purpose of the research. By the end of the book readers will not only marvel at how far we've come, they will be in awe of where we are going and what this could mean for the worlds of physics and chemistry as we know them today.

Rise of the Necrofauna: A Provocative Look at the Science, Ethics, and Risks of De-Extinction


Britt Wray - 2017
    She introduces us to renowned futurists like Stewart Brand and scientists like George Church, who are harnessing the powers of CRISPR gene editing in the hopes of “reviving” extinct passenger pigeons, woolly mammoths, and heath hens. She speaks with Nikita Zimov, who together with his eclectic father Sergey, is creating Siberia’s Pleistocene Park—a daring attempt to rebuild the mammoth’s ancient ecosystem in order to save earth from climate apocalypse. Through interviews with these and other thought leaders, Wray reveals the many incredible opportunities for research and conservation made possible by this emerging new field.But we also hear from more cautionary voices, like those of researcher and award-winning author Beth Shapiro (How to Clone a Woolly Mammoth) and extinction philosopher Thomas van Dooren. Writing with passion and perspective, Wray delves into the larger questions that come with this incredible new science, reminding us that de-extinction could bring just as many dangers as it does possibilities. What happens, for example, when we bring an “unextinct” creature back into the wild? How can we care for these strange animals and ensure their comfort and safety—not to mention our own? And what does de-extinction mean for those species that are currently endangered? Is it really ethical to bring back an extinct passenger pigeon, for example, when countless other birds today will face the same fate?By unpacking the many biological, technological, ethical, environmental, and legal questions raised by this fascinating new field, Wray offers a captivating look at the best and worst of resurrection science.

Into the Jungle: Great Adventures in the Search for Evolution


Sean B. Carroll - 2008
    Each of the nine stories in this brief reader chronicles the dramatic adventures of an influential zoologist, geologist, paleontologist, or geneticist on their path to some of the most important discoveries that have shaped our understanding of how life has evolved. Accessible and engaging, Carroll's storytelling approach helps students appreciate the physical hardships the featured explorers endured and the obstacles they had to overcome in challenging societal belief systems and initiating paradigm shifts in the scientific community. In reading the tales, students will also come to understand the frequent role of serendipity in scientific discovery. Key Topics: Reverend Darwin's Detour, Drawing a Line between Monkeys and Kangaroos, Life Imitates Life, Java Man, Where the Dragon Laid Her Eggs, The Day the Mesozoic Died, Miss Latimer's Extraordinary Fish, A Sickle-Cell Safari, In Cold Blood: The Tale of the Icefish, General Review and Discussion, Sources and Further Reading Market: Intended for those in learning the basics of evolutionary biology.

Seven Worlds One Planet: Natural Wonders from Every Continent


Jonny Keeling - 2019
    A place 200 million years in the making.Long ago, our planet had only one gigantic land mass. Then something monumental happened. That supercontinent ruptured and seven different worlds were born. Each of those worlds - or continents - evolved, and continues to evolve, its own way of life. From the jungle of the Congo or the majestic Himalayas to the densely populated wilds of Europe or the comparatively isolated Australasia, Seven Worlds, One Planet explores the natural wonders that give each of our continents its distinct character. Following the animals that have made these iconic environments their home, it discovers spectacular wildlife stories that reveal what makes each of these seven worlds unique. With a foreword by Sir David Attenborough and over 250 breathtaking images, including stills from the BBC Natural History Unit’s spectacular footage, Seven Worlds, One Planet is a stunning exploration of the planet, and the worlds within it, that we call home.