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‘Intimate and thoughtful… Exciting… [A] sweeping evolutionary history.’ Science The author of the bestselling Your Inner Fish gives us a brilliant, up-to-date account of the great transformations in the history of life on Earth. This is a story full of surprises. If you think that feathers arose to help animals fly, or lungs to help them walk on land, you’d be in good company. You’d also be entirely wrong. Neil Shubin delves deep into the mystery of life, the ongoing revolutions in our understanding of how we got here, and brings us closer to answering one of the great questions – was life on earth inevitable…or was it all an accident?
From the scientist who made the groundbreaking discovery of the fish with hands, here is a lively, thoroughly engrossing chronicle of evolutionary history that unearths the often startling secrets behind why we look and behave the way we do. Illustrations.
How did flying birds evolve from running dinosaurs, terrestrial trotting tetrapods from swimming fish, and whales return to swim in the sea? These are some of the great transformations in the history of life; events that have captured the imagination of scientists and the general public alike. At first glance, these major evolutionary events seem utterly impossible. The before and after look so fundamentally different that the great transformations of the history of life not only seem impossible, but unknowable. The 500 million year history of vertebrates is filled with change and, as a consequence, every living species contains within its structure, DNA, and fossil record, a narrative of th...
From the scientist who made the groundbreaking discovery of the fish with hands, here is a lively, thoroughly engrossing chronicle of evolutionary history that unearths the often startling secrets behind why we look and behave the way we do. Illustrations.
Your Inner Fish tells the extraordinary history of the human body and gives answers to some of the questions that only evolution can. Why do we look the way we do? Why are we able to do all the different things we do? And, finally, why do we fall ill in the way that we do? Neil Shubin draws on the latest genetic research and his huge experience as an expeditionary paleontologist to show the incredible impact the 3.5 billion year history of life has had on our bodies. He takes readers on a fascinating, unexpected journey and allows us to discover the deep connection to nature in our own bodies.
A Kirkus Reviews Best Nonfiction Book of the Year In The Universe Within, Neil Shubin reveals the connection between the evolution of the cosmos and the evolution of the human body. Just as the history of the earth is written in the rocks, so too is the universe’s 14-billion-year history written in the human body. Starting at the smallest level, with our very molecular composition, Shubin explores the question of why we are the way we are, tracing the formation of the planets, the moon, and the globe of Earth through the development of the organs, cells, and genes that make up human life.
Everybody Out of the Pond At the Water's Edge will change the way you think about your place in the world. The awesome journey of life's transformation from the first microbes 4 billion years ago to Homo sapiens today is an epic that we are only now beginning to grasp. Magnificent and bizarre, it is the story of how we got here, what we left behind, and what we brought with us. We all know about evolution, but it still seems absurd that our ancestors were fish. Darwin's idea of natural selection was the key to solving generation-to-generation evolution -- microevolution -- but it could only point us toward a complete explanation, still to come, of the engines of macroevolution, the transform...
During the past 13.7 billion years (or so) since the Big Bang, our universe has evolved, stars have formed and died and our planet congealed from the matter in space. In this title, the author reveals to us the extraordinary cosmic and evolutionary adventure of our own bodies.
"Fascinating and exhilarating—Sean B. Carroll at his very best."—Bill Bryson, author of The Body: A Guide for Occupants From acclaimed writer and biologist Sean B. Carroll, a rollicking, awe-inspiring story of the surprising power of chance in our lives and the world Why is the world the way it is? How did we get here? Does everything happen for a reason or are some things left to chance? Philosophers and theologians have pondered these questions for millennia, but startling scientific discoveries over the past half century are revealing that we live in a world driven by chance. A Series of Fortunate Events tells the story of the awesome power of chance and how it is the surprising sourc...
Darwin's theory of evolution was for more than a century dogged by a major problem: the evidence proving the connections between the main groups of organisms was nowhere to be found. By the 1970s this absence of 'transitional fossils' was hotly debated; some palaeontologists wondered if these 'missing links' had been so quick that no trace of them was left. However, during the past three decades fossils of walking whales from Pakistan, feathered dinosaurs from China, fish with feet from the Arctic Circle, ape-like humans from Africa, and many more bizarre creatures that fill in crucial gaps in our understanding of evolution have all been unearthed. The first account of the hunt for evolution's 'missing links', Written in Stone shows how these discoveries have revolutionised palaeontology, and explores what its findings might mean for our place on earth.