Download or read book A New History of Life written by Peter Ward and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2015-04-07 with total page 401 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The history of life on Earth is, in some form or another, known to us all--or so we think. A New History of Life offers a provocative new account, based on the latest scientific research, of how life on our planet evolved--the first major new synthesis for general readers in two decades. Charles Darwin's theories, first published more than 150 years ago, form the backbone of how we understand the history of the Earth. In reality, the currently accepted history of life on Earth is so flawed, so out of date, that it's past time we need a 'New History of Life.' In their latest book, Joe Kirschvink and Peter Ward will show that many of our most cherished beliefs about the evolution of life are wrong. Gathering and analyzing years of discoveries and research not yet widely known to the public, A New History of Life proposes a different origin of species than the one Darwin proposed, one which includes eight-foot-long centipedes, a frozen “snowball Earth”, and the seeds for life originating on Mars. Drawing on their years of experience in paleontology, biology, chemistry, and astrobiology, experts Ward and Kirschvink paint a picture of the origins life on Earth that are at once too fabulous to imagine and too familiar to dismiss--and looking forward, A New History of Life brilliantly assembles insights from some of the latest scientific research to understand how life on Earth can and might evolve far into the future.
Download or read book History of Life written by Richard Cowen and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2013-01-22 with total page 832 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This text is designed for students and anyone else with an interest in the history of life on our planet. The author describes the biological evolution of Earth’s organisms, and reconstructs their adaptations to the life they led, and the ecology and environment in which they functioned. On the grand scale, Earth is a constantly changing planet, continually presenting organisms with challenges. Changing geography, climate, atmosphere, oceanic and land environments set a stage in which organisms interact with their environments and one another, with evolutionary change an inevitable result. The organisms themselves in turn can change global environments: oxygen in our atmosphere is all produced by photosynthesis, for example. The interplay between a changing Earth and its evolving organisms is the underlying theme of the book. The book has a dedicated website which explores additional enriching information and discussion, and provides or points to the art for the book and many other images useful for teaching. See: www.wiley.com/go/cowen/historyoflife.
Download or read book The Tangled Tree written by David Quammen and published by Simon & Schuster. This book was released on 2019-08-06 with total page 480 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this New York Times bestseller and longlist nominee for the National Book Award, “our greatest living chronicler of the natural world” (The New York Times), David Quammen explains how recent discoveries in molecular biology affect our understanding of evolution and life’s history. In the mid-1970s, scientists began using DNA sequences to reexamine the history of all life. Perhaps the most startling discovery to come out of this new field—the study of life’s diversity and relatedness at the molecular level—is horizontal gene transfer (HGT), or the movement of genes across species lines. It turns out that HGT has been widespread and important; we now know that roughly eight percent of the human genome arrived sideways by viral infection—a type of HGT. In The Tangled Tree, “the grandest tale in biology….David Quammen presents the science—and the scientists involved—with patience, candor, and flair” (Nature). We learn about the major players, such as Carl Woese, the most important little-known biologist of the twentieth century; Lynn Margulis, the notorious maverick whose wild ideas about “mosaic” creatures proved to be true; and Tsutomu Wantanabe, who discovered that the scourge of antibiotic-resistant bacteria is a direct result of horizontal gene transfer, bringing the deep study of genome histories to bear on a global crisis in public health. “David Quammen proves to be an immensely well-informed guide to a complex story” (The Wall Street Journal). In The Tangled Tree, he explains how molecular studies of evolution have brought startling recognitions about the tangled tree of life—including where we humans fit upon it. Thanks to new technologies, we now have the ability to alter even our genetic composition—through sideways insertions, as nature has long been doing. “The Tangled Tree is a source of wonder….Quammen has written a deep and daring intellectual adventure” (The Boston Globe).
Download or read book A Brief Illustrated History of Life on Earth written by Steve Parker and published by Capstone. This book was released on 2017-01-01 with total page 33 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Brief Illustrated History of Life on Earth charts the evolution of living species all the way from 2.5 billion years ago, through the Triassic, Jurassic, and Cretaceous periods and right through to today. With stunning full-color images and illustrations, this beautiful book is sure to fascinate and charm the young reader.
Download or read book A Brief History of Life on Earth written by Clémence Dupont and published by Prestel. This book was released on 2018-11 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The story of life on earth unfolds in dramatic fashion in this amazing concertina picture book that takes readers from 4.6 billion years ago to the present day. Fully expanded to 8 meters (26 feet), this spectacular visual timeline is a very impressive panorama that reveals evolution in all its glory. Full color.
Download or read book A Very Short History of Life on Earth written by Henry Gee and published by St. Martin's Press. This book was released on 2021-11-09 with total page 142 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Royal Society's Science Book of the Year "[A]n exuberant romp through evolution, like a modern-day Willy Wonka of genetic space. Gee’s grand tour enthusiastically details the narrative underlying life’s erratic and often whimsical exploration of biological form and function.” —Adrian Woolfson, The Washington Post In the tradition of Richard Dawkins, Bill Bryson, and Simon Winchester—An entertaining and uniquely informed narration of Life's life story. In the beginning, Earth was an inhospitably alien place—in constant chemical flux, covered with churning seas, crafting its landscape through incessant volcanic eruptions. Amid all this tumult and disaster, life began. The earliest living things were no more than membranes stretched across microscopic gaps in rocks, where boiling hot jets of mineral-rich water gushed out from cracks in the ocean floor. Although these membranes were leaky, the environment within them became different from the raging maelstrom beyond. These havens of order slowly refined the generation of energy, using it to form membrane-bound bubbles that were mostly-faithful copies of their parents—a foamy lather of soap-bubble cells standing as tiny clenched fists, defiant against the lifeless world. Life on this planet has continued in much the same way for millennia, adapting to literally every conceivable setback that living organisms could encounter and thriving, from these humblest beginnings to the thrilling and unlikely story of ourselves. In A (Very) Short History of Life on Earth, Henry Gee zips through the last 4.6 billion years with infectious enthusiasm and intellectual rigor. Drawing on the very latest scientific understanding and writing in a clear, accessible style, he tells an enlightening tale of survival and persistence that illuminates the delicate balance within which life has always existed.
Download or read book Life written by Richard Fortey and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2011-03-23 with total page 567 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: By one of Britain's most gifted scientists: a magnificently daring and compulsively readable account of life on Earth (from the "big bang" to the advent of man), based entirely on the most original of all sources--the evidence of fossils. With excitement and driving intelligence, Richard Fortey guides us from the barren globe spinning in space, through the very earliest signs of life in the sulphurous hot springs and volcanic vents of the young planet, the appearance of cells, the slow creation of an atmosphere and the evolution of myriad forms of plants and animals that could then be sustained, including the magnificent era of the dinosaurs, and on to the last moment before the debut of Homo sapiens. Ranging across multiple scientific disciplines, explicating in wonderfully clear and refreshing prose their findings and arguments--about the origins of life, the causes of species extinctions and the first appearance of man--Fortey weaves this history out of the most delicate traceries left in rock, stone and earth. He also explains how, on each aspect of nature and life, scientists have reached the understanding we have today, who made the key discoveries, who their opponents were and why certain ideas won. Brimful of wit, fascinating personal experience and high scholarship, this book may well be our best introduction yet to the complex history of life on Earth. A Book-of-the-Month Club Main Selection With 32 pages of photographs
Download or read book The History of Life on Earth written by Nathan Keighley and published by Austin MacAuley. This book was released on 2018-08 with total page 144 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Evolution is one of the most fundamental principles that governs life. Its actions may be subtle, but they can be observed every day, such as predators hunting prey, or plant successions in competing for empty space. These habituations were envisaged by Charles Darwin to be the properties of nature that lead to evolution and prompted the conceptualisation of the theory of natural selection. The force of this process can be most dramatically depicted by looking at the variation of organisms throughout the history of life on Earth.
Download or read book The History of Life A Very Short Introduction written by Michael J. Benton and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2008-11-27 with total page 185 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This Very Short Introduction presents a succinct and accessible guide to the key episodes in the story of life on earth - from the very origins of life four million years ago to the extraordinary diversity of species around the globe today.
Download or read book A History of the Life Sciences written by Lois N. Magner and published by Marcel Dekker. This book was released on 1994 with total page 520 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A clear and concise survey of the major themes and theories embedded in the history of life science, this book covers the development and significance of scientific methodologies, the relationship between science and society, and the diverse ideologies and current paradigms affecting the evolution and progression of biological studies. The author discusses cell theory, embryology, physiology, microbiology, evolution, genetics, and molecular biology; the Human Genome Project; and genomics and proteomics. Covering the philosophies of ancient civilizations to modern advances in genomics and molecular biology, the book is a unique and comprehensive resource.
Download or read book Major Events in the History of Life written by J. William Schopf and published by Jones & Bartlett Learning. This book was released on 1992 with total page 210 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Major Events in the History of Life, present six chapters that summarize our understanding of crucial events that shaped the development of the earth's environment and the course of biological evolution over some four billion years of geological time. The subjects are covered by acknowledged leaders in their fields span an enormous sweep of biologic history, from the formation of planet Earth and the origin of living systems to our earliest records of human activity. Several chapters present new data and new syntheses, or summarized results of new types of analysis, material not usually available in current college textbooks.
Download or read book Evolution in Four Dimensions revised edition written by Eva Jablonka and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2014-03-21 with total page 577 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A pioneering proposal for a pluralistic extension of evolutionary theory, now updated to reflect the most recent research. This new edition of the widely read Evolution in Four Dimensions has been revised to reflect the spate of new discoveries in biology since the book was first published in 2005, offering corrections, an updated bibliography, and a substantial new chapter. Eva Jablonka and Marion Lamb's pioneering argument proposes that there is more to heredity than genes. They describe four “dimensions” in heredity—four inheritance systems that play a role in evolution: genetic, epigenetic (or non-DNA cellular transmission of traits), behavioral, and symbolic (transmission through language and other forms of symbolic communication). These systems, they argue, can all provide variations on which natural selection can act. Jablonka and Lamb present a richer, more complex view of evolution than that offered by the gene-based Modern Synthesis, arguing that induced and acquired changes also play a role. Their lucid and accessible text is accompanied by artist-physician Anna Zeligowski's lively drawings, which humorously and effectively illustrate the authors' points. Each chapter ends with a dialogue in which the authors refine their arguments against the vigorous skepticism of the fictional “I.M.” (for Ipcha Mistabra—Aramaic for “the opposite conjecture”). The extensive new chapter, presented engagingly as a dialogue with I.M., updates the information on each of the four dimensions—with special attention to the epigenetic, where there has been an explosion of new research. Praise for the first edition “With courage and verve, and in a style accessible to general readers, Jablonka and Lamb lay out some of the exciting new pathways of Darwinian evolution that have been uncovered by contemporary research.” —Evelyn Fox Keller, MIT, author of Making Sense of Life: Explaining Biological Development with Models, Metaphors, and Machines “In their beautifully written and impressively argued new book, Jablonka and Lamb show that the evidence from more than fifty years of molecular, behavioral and linguistic studies forces us to reevaluate our inherited understanding of evolution.” —Oren Harman, The New Republic “It is not only an enjoyable read, replete with ideas and facts of interest but it does the most valuable thing a book can do—it makes you think and reexamine your premises and long-held conclusions.” —Adam Wilkins, BioEssays
Download or read book Wonderful Life The Burgess Shale and the Nature of History written by Stephen Jay Gould and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 1990-09-17 with total page 350 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "[An] extraordinary book. . . . Mr. Gould is an exceptional combination of scientist and science writer. . . . He is thus exceptionally well placed to tell these stories, and he tells them with fervor and intelligence."—James Gleick, New York Times Book Review High in the Canadian Rockies is a small limestone quarry formed 530 million years ago called the Burgess Shale. It hold the remains of an ancient sea where dozens of strange creatures lived—a forgotten corner of evolution preserved in awesome detail. In this book Stephen Jay Gould explores what the Burgess Shale tells us about evolution and the nature of history.
Download or read book History and Life written by Patricia Gutierrez-Smith and published by . This book was released on 1984 with total page 768 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Cowen s History of Life written by Michael J. Benton and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2019-10-07 with total page 406 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A newly revised and fully updated edition of the market-leading introduction to paleontology Designed for students and anyone else with an interest in the history of life on our planet, the new edition of this classic text describes the biological evolution of Earth’s organisms, and reconstructs their adaptations and the ecology and environments in which they functioned. Cowen's History of Life, 6th Edition includes major updates, including substantial rewrites to chapters on the origins of eukaryotes, the Cambrian explosion, the terrestrialization of plants and animals, the Triassic recovery of life, the origin of birds, the end-Cretaceous mass extinction, and human evolution. It also features new chapters on plants, soils and transformation of the land; the Mesozoic marine revolution; and the evolution of oceans and climates. Beginning with the origin of the Earth and the earliest life on earth, the book goes on to offer insightful contributions covering: the evolution of Metazoans; the early vertebrates; life of vertebrates on land; and early amniotes and thermoregulation. The book also looks at: dinosaur diversity, as well as their demise; early mammals; the rise of modern mammals; the Neogene Savannas; primates; life in the ice ages; and more. Covers the breadth of the subject in a concise yet specific way for undergrads with no academic background in the topic Reorganizes all chapters to reflect the geological series of events, enabling a new focus on big events Updated with three brand new chapters and numerous revised ones Put together by a new editorial team internationally recognized as the global leaders in paleontology Filled with illustrations and photographs throughout Includes diagrams to show internal structures of organisms, cladograms, time scales and events, and paleogeographic maps Supplemented with a dedicated website that explores additional enriching information and discussion, and which features images for use in visual presentations Cowen's History of Life, 6th Edition is an ideal book for undergraduate students taking courses in introductory paleontology, as well those on global change and earth systems.
Download or read book Explorers of Deep Time written by Roy Plotnick and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2022-01-04 with total page 483 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Paleontology is one of the most visible yet most misunderstood fields of science. Children dream of becoming paleontologists when they grow up. Museum visitors flock to exhibits on dinosaurs and other prehistoric animals. The media reports on fossil discoveries and new clues to mass extinctions. Nonetheless, misconceptions abound: paleontologists are assumed only to be interested in dinosaurs, and they are all too often imagined as bearded white men in battered cowboy hats. Roy Plotnick provides a behind-the-scenes look at paleontology as it exists today in all its complexity. He explores the field’s aims, methods, and possibilities, with an emphasis on the compelling personal stories of the scientists who have made it a career. Paleontologists study the entire history of life on Earth; they do not only use hammers and chisels to unearth fossils but are just as likely to work with cutting-edge computing technology. Plotnick presents the big questions about life’s history that drive paleontological research and shows why knowledge of Earth’s past is essential to understanding present-day environmental crises. He introduces readers to the diverse group of people of all genders, races, and international backgrounds who make up the twenty-first-century paleontology community, foregrounding their perspectives and firsthand narratives. He also frankly discusses the many challenges that face the profession, with key takeaways for aspiring scientists. Candid and comprehensive, Explorers of Deep Time is essential reading for anyone curious about the everyday work of real-life paleontologists.
Download or read book A History of Life in 100 Fossils written by Paul D. Taylor and published by Smithsonian Institution. This book was released on 2014-10-14 with total page 212 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A History of Life in 100 Fossils showcases 100 key fossils that together illustrate the evolution of life on earth. Iconic specimens have been selected from the renowned collections of the two premier natural history museums in the world, the Smithsonian Institution, Washington, and the Natural History Museum, London. The fossils ahve been chosen not only for their importance in the history of life, but also because of the visual story they tell. This stunning book is perfect for all readers because its clear explanations and beautiful photographs illuminate the significance of these amazing pieces, including 500 million-year-old Burgess Shale fossils that provide a window into early animal life in the sea, insects encapsulated by amber, the first fossil bird Archaeopteryx, and the remains of our own ancestors.
