Book picks similar to
Rereading the Fossil Record: The Growth of Paleobiology as an Evolutionary Discipline by David Sepkoski
science
ecology-and-evolution
evolution
history
Emergence: The Connected Lives of Ants, Brains, Cities, and Software
Steven Johnson - 2001
Explaining why the whole is sometimes smarter than the sum of its parts, Johnson presents surprising examples of feedback, self-organization, and adaptive learning. How does a lively neighborhood evolve out of a disconnected group of shopkeepers, bartenders, and real estate developers? How does a media event take on a life of its own? How will new software programs create an intelligent World Wide Web? In the coming years, the power of self-organization -- coupled with the connective technology of the Internet -- will usher in a revolution every bit as significant as the introduction of electricity. Provocative and engaging, Emergence puts you on the front lines of this exciting upheaval in science and thought.
The Theology of Time: The Secret of the Time
Elijah Muhammad - 1997
Book by Muhammad, Elijah, Elijah Muhammad
Curators: Behind the Scenes of Natural History Museums
Lance Grande - 2017
They have also become vibrant educational centers, full of engaging exhibits that share those discoveries with students and an enthusiastic general public. At the heart of it all from the very start have been curators. Yet after three decades as a natural history curator, Lance Grande found that he still had to explain to people what he does. This book is the answer—and, oh, what an answer it is: lively, exciting, up-to-date, it offers a portrait of curators and their research like none we’ve seen, one that conveys the intellectual excitement and the educational and social value of curation. Grande uses the personal story of his own career—most of it spent at Chicago’s storied Field Museum—to structure his account as he explores the value of research and collections, the importance of public engagement, changing ecological and ethical considerations, and the impact of rapidly improving technology. Throughout, we are guided by Grande’s keen sense of mission, of a job where the why is always as important as the what. This beautifully written and richly illustrated book is a clear-eyed but loving account of natural history museums, their curators, and their ever-expanding roles in the twenty-first century.
The Dragon Seekers: How An Extraordinary Circle Of Fossilists Discovered The Dinosaurs And Paved The Way For Darwin
Christopher McGowan - 2001
The intriguing cast of characters includes Mary Anning, a working-class woman who became one of the most successful fossil collectors of all time; Thomas Hawkins, another amateur collector who "improved upon" fossils in order to increase their market value; the eccentric William Buckland, discoverer of the world's first dinosaur (Megalosaurus), and Richard Owen, an expert anatomist, who synthesized the discoveries of the age and ultimately coined the word "dinosaur" in 1842. Christopher McGowan takes us back to a time when the new sciences of geology and paleontology were as young and vibrant as genetic engineering is today. Through heated public debates on everything from the age of the earth to the notion of extinction, the Dragon Seekers initiated the shift from a biblical to a scientific interpretation of the remote past. In this way, they laid the intellectual groundwork for Darwin's revolutionary ideas, and launched a global obsession with the Age of Reptiles that continues even today.
The Space Race: A History From Beginning to End
Hourly History - 2018
During fourteen years, from 1955 to 1969, the Soviet Union and the United States of America were engaged in a dramatic race against each other to conquer space. This period encompassed dramatic victories, humbling defeats, and more than one tragedy. This is a story of human courage and ingenuity at its best and political maneuvering at its worst, of almost unbelievable technological progress undertaken with the object not just of advancing human knowledge but also of proving the superiority of one country over another. Inside you will read about... ✓ From Missiles to Rockets ✓ Russia Takes the Lead ✓ Early American Failures ✓ The First Men in Space ✓ Fatalities on Both Sides ✓ The Moon Landing And much more! The space race culminated in man setting foot upon the moon, but each milestone on the way to that final goal was bitterly contested. Two powerful nations pledged a substantial part of their national resources to beat the other in a scientific and technological race to be the first to achieve new records. In terms of contests between major powers, there has never been anything quite as dramatic, public, and sustained as the space race; it remains one of the most fascinating and engaging episodes of the Cold War.
Dr Karl's Little Book of Climate Change Science
Karl Kruszelnicki - 2021
(We can!)
The Lost Dinosaurs of Egypt
William Nothdurft - 2002
Ernst Stromer led an expedition to Egypt’s Bahariya Oasis in the Sahara and discovered four new species of dinosaurs, including the Tyrannosaurus rex–size predator Spinosaurus. But tragically, all his work was incinerated in 1944 during the Allied bombing of Munich.In 1999, Josh Smith, then a graduate student at the University of Pennsylvania, took his brilliant, precocious team to Egypt under the direction of world-renowned paleontologist Dr. Peter Dodson and blundered onto an archaeological site that yielded awe-inspiring results: all of Dr. Stromer’s early findings, and also an entirely new genus of dinosaur, Paralititan stromeri, one of the largest creatures ever to inhabit the planet.
The Missing Lynx: The Past and Future of Britain's Lost Mammals
Ross Barnett - 2019
In The Missing Lynx, Ross Barnett uses case studies, new fossil discoveries, biomolecular evidence and more to paint pictures of these extinct species, and to explore the significance of the lynx's disappearance in ecological terms. He also discusses how the Britons that these animals shared their home with might have viewed them, and why some survived while others vanished.Barnett also looks in detail and the realistic potential of reintroductions and even of resurrection--topics that capture public interest today. With Beaver now wild again in various parts of Britain and even Great Bustard on Salisbury Plain, what about the return of sabretooths, mammoths, and the aurochs to modern ecosystems? Will we ever be able to bring these animals back? And should we?At a time where rewilding is moving from pie-in-the-sky to actual reality, this timely and important book looks from a scientific perspective at the magnificent megafauna we've lost, why we lost it and what happened as a result, and how we might realistically turn the ecological tide.
Improbable Destinies: Fate, Chance, and the Future of Evolution
Jonathan B. Losos - 2017
But evolutionary biologists also point out many examples of contingency, cases where the tiniest change--a random mutation or an ancient butterfly sneeze--caused evolution to take a completely different course. What role does each force really play in the constantly changing natural world? Are the plants and animals that exist today, and we humans ourselves, inevitabilities or evolutionary freaks? And what does that say about life on other planets?Jonathan Losos reveals what the latest breakthroughs in evolutionary biology can tell us about one of the greatest ongoing debates in science. He takes us around the globe to meet the researchers who are solving the deepest mysteries of life on Earth through their work in experimental evolutionary science. Losos himself is one of the leaders in this exciting new field, and he illustrates how experiments with guppies, fruit flies, bacteria, foxes, and field mice, along with his own work with anole lizards on Caribbean islands, are rewinding the tape of life to reveal just how rapid and predictable evolution can be.Improbable Destinies will change the way we think and talk about evolution. Losos's insights into natural selection and evolutionary change have far-reaching applications for protecting ecosystems, securing our food supply, and fighting off harmful viruses and bacteria. This compelling narrative offers a new understanding of ourselves and our role in the natural world and the cosmos.
The Flat-Earth Conspiracy
Eric Dubay - 2014
For almost 500 years, the masses have been thoroughly deceived by a cosmic fairy-tale of astronomical proportions. We have been taught a falsehood so gigantic and diabolical that it has blinded us from our own experience and common sense, from seeing the world and the universe as they truly are. Through pseudo-science books and programs, mass media and public education, universities and government propaganda, the world has been systematically brain-washed, slowly indoctrinated over centuries into the unquestioning belief of the greatest lie of all time. A multi-generational conspiracy has succeeded, in the minds of the masses, to pick up the fixed Earth, shape it into a ball, spin it in circles, and throw it around the Sun! The greatest cover-up of all time, NASA and Freemasonry's biggest secret, is that we are living on a plane, not a planet, that Earth is the flat, stationary center of the universe.
The Artificial Ape: How Technology Changed the Course of Human Evolution
Timothy Taylor - 2010
Unlike our cousins who subsist on raw food, spend their days and nights outdoors, and wear a thick coat of hair, humans are entirely dependent on artificial things, such as clothing, shelter, and the use of tools, and would die in nature without them. Yet, despite our status as the weakest ape, we are the masters of this planet. Given these inherent deficits, how did humans come out on top?In this fascinating new account of our origins, leading archaeologist Timothy Taylor proposes a new way of thinking about human evolution through our relationship with objects. Drawing on the latest fossil evidence, Taylor argues that at each step of our species' development, humans made choices that caused us to assume greater control of our evolution. Our appropriation of objects allowed us to walk upright, lose our body hair, and grow significantly larger brains. As we push the frontiers of scientific technology, creating prosthetics, intelligent implants, and artificially modified genes, we continue a process that started in the prehistoric past, when we first began to extend our powers through objects.Weaving together lively discussions of major discoveries of human skeletons and artifacts with a reexamination of Darwin's theory of evolution, Taylor takes us on an exciting and challenging journey that begins to answer the fundamental question about our existence: what makes humans unique, and what does that mean for our future?
Origins: The Search for Our Prehistoric Past
Frank H.T. Rhodes - 2016
Here and there, we can supplement these meager scraps by the use of biochemical markers or geochemical signatures that add useful information, but, even with such additional help, our reconstructions and our models of descent are often tentative. For the fossil record is, as we have seen, as biased as it is incomplete. But fragmentary, selective, and biased though it is, the fossil record, with all its imperfections, is still a treasure. Though whole chapters are missing, many pages lost, and the earliest pages so damaged as to be, as yet, virtually unreadable, this--the greatest biography of all--is one in whose closing pages we find ourselves.--from OriginsIn Origins, Frank H. T. Rhodes explores the origin and evolution of living things, the changing environments in which they have developed, and the challenges we now face on an increasingly crowded and polluted planet. Rhodes argues that the future well-being of our burgeoning population depends in no small part on our understanding of life's past, its long and slow development, and its intricate interdependencies.Rhodes's accessible and extensively illustrated treatment of the origins narrative describes the nature of the search for prehistoric life, the significance of geologic time, the origin of life, the emergence and spread of flora and fauna, the evolution of primates, and the emergence of modern humans.
The Wisdom of the Bones: In Search of Human Origins
Alan C. Walker - 1996
. . . As engaging an explanation of how scientists study fossil bones as any I have ever read." --John R. Alden, Philadelphia InquirerIn 1984 a team of paleoanthropologists on a dig in northern Kenya found something extraordinary: a nearly complete skeleton of Homo erectus, a creature that lived 1.5 million years ago and is widely thought to be the missing link between apes and humans. The remains belonged to a tall, rangy adolescent male. The researchers called him "Nariokotome boy." In this immensely lively book, Alan Walker, one of the lead researchers, and his wife and fellow scientist Pat Shipman tell the story of that epochal find and reveal what it tells us about our earliest ancestors. We learn that Nariokotome boy was a highly social predator who walked upright but lacked the capacity for speech. In leading us to these conclusions, The Wisdom of the Bones also offers an engaging chronicle of the hundred-year-long search for a "missing link," a saga of folly, heroic dedication, and inspired science. "Brilliantly captures [an] intellectual odyssey. . . . One of the finest examples of a practicing scientist writing for a popular audience." --Portland Oregonian "A vivid insider's perspective on the global efforts to document our own ancestry."--Richard E. Leakey
Dinosaurs: A Very Short Introduction
David Norman - 2005
But how much do these types of entertainment really tell us about recent scientific discoveries and the latest research into the world of the dinosaur?This is the first book explain how scientists have been able to put together a picture of how dinosaurs looked, what they ate, and how they moved and interacted with each other. Taking a new approach to the subject, David Norman combines different areas of science, such as anatomy, genetics, forensics, and engineering design, to piece together the latest evidence of how animal life evolved on earth. Norman engagingly lays out the history of dinosaur research, from the speculation over ancient myths about dragons, to the latest virtual reality animation sequences and engineering design analysis. He also discusses the role that informed speculation and luck has played in many of the major discoveries.This book is a fantastic introduction for those just beginning to take an interest in dinosaurs and a must-read for true dinosaur-lovers who want to know not just the latest theories and discoveries, but how scientists achieved them.
The Gilded Dinosaur: The Fossil War Between E.D. Cope and O.C. Marsh and the Rise of American Science
Mark Jaffe - 2000
The second half of the nineteenth century -- the so-called Gilded Age -- was a time when Americans were exploring the West and building a nation that would stretch from coast to coast.It was also a time of scientific ferment. Charles Darwin had shaken the very foundations of Victorian society with his theory of evolution by natural selection, and scientists across the civilized world were locked in a great battle over Darwin's idea. While the debate raged in Europe, the hunt for hard evidence increasingly focused on the American West, with its grand mesas, buttes, and badlands. "We must turn to the New World if we wish to see in perfection the oldest monuments of earth's history," advised Sir Charles Lyell, the father of modern geology, after a visit to America. "Certainly in no other country are these ancient strata developed on a grander scale or more plentifully charged with fossils."Could the answer to the history of life and the proof of evolution be found in those fossils? That was the question that two young American paleontologists--Edward Drinker Cope and Othniel Charles Marsh--set out to answer. But what began as a friendly contest quickly turned into bitter rivalry that would spill over into American science and politics and rage relentlessly for nearly three decades. Cope and Marsh would battle on the prairies, in the halls of Congress, in science journals, and in the popular press. Both wealthy men, they launched lavish, western expeditions and raced across the plains and mountains searching for the remains of the magnificent beasts that once inhabited the continent. Along the way they would encounter George Custer, Sitting Bull, Buffalo Bill, and Red Cloud. Among the most remarkable fossil discoveries of Cope and Marsh are a bevy of dinosaurs, including some of the best known beasts -- the Triceratops, the Stegosaurus, the Camarasaurus, and the Brontosaurus. Even today, Marsh holds the record for dinosaur discoveries. Just as valuable, however, were some of Marsh's discoveries of ancient mammals and birds that provided the first real proof of Dar- win's theory--"The best support for the theory in twenty years," the great Darwin himself proclaimed. The tale of Cope and Marsh is also the story of the rise of American science. When their story begins just after the Civil War, America was an intellectual backwater, with eminent scientists snookered by the great, fake stone statue The Cardiff Giant--a hoax unmasked by Marsh. But even as Cope and Marsh waged war, they both fought to build up American science and its scientific institutions. Yet despite their discoveries and their Gilded Age celebrity, the names of Cope and Marsh have faded into the recesses of the library and archive. In The Gilded Dinosaur Mark Jaffe exhumes from those archives the notes, journals, and letters of Cope and Marsh to reanimate and retell one of the keenest rivalries in the history of science.