Remarkable Creatures: Epic Adventures in the Search for the Origins of Species - Hardcover

B. Carroll, Sean

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1847247210 ISBN 13: 9781847247216

Publisher: Quercus Publishing, 2009

Synopsis

In 1809, when Darwin was born, much of the world was an unexplored wilderness. Our knowledge of the past was nonexistent, and our picture of our species' history little more than a set of fantastic myths and fairytales. But a new era was dawning. Five decades later, On the Origin of the Species was able to draw on the pioneering work of explorers and naturalists to produce a theory that revolutionized our conception of our world. And the revolution didn't stop with the publication of Darwin's masterwork. 150 years later, his 'dangerous idea' is still headline news, denied by many, capable of enraging and dividing, even as biologists decipher the 3-billion-year history of life as written in our very DNA. This book tells the stories of the most dramatic adventures and important discoveries in two centuries of natural history - from Alexander von Humboldt's epic journeys in South America to the hi-tech genome-reading projects making headlines today - and how they gave birth to and have nourished the evolution revolution.

About this title

About the Author

Sean B. Carroll is an Investigator at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and Professor of Genetics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. His scientific discoveries have been featured in Time and The New York Times, and Carroll himself has written articles for Natural History and Playboy. His first book, Endless Forms Most Beautiful was a 2005 Top Popular Science Book of the Year (USA Today). He and his wife and children reside in Madison, Wisconsin.

From the Back Cover

Remarkable Creatures tells the story of the evolution revolution - two centuries of exploration, adventure and discovery that changed our view of life, our planet and ourselves forever.

From the Inside Flap

This is the story of the making of the theory of evolution. On the Origin of Species was published on 24 November 1859, but world-changing theories aren't made in a day: our tale begins a decade before Charles Darwin's birth, and spans more than two hundred years. It leads us through the rain forests of South America, navigates polar oceans and central Asian deserts before diving into the very stuff of life itself, the tightly coiled double helix of DNA. It tells the three-billion-year story of life, unearthing ape-men, rhino-sized giant sloths, and the almost alien life-forms that squirmed across Earth's sea floors 500 million years ago. But these aren't the most remarkable creatures in this story: that distinction belongs to the men and women whose drive to discover led them to uncharted shores and to a new understanding of ourselves, of life and of our planet.
Remarkable Creatures circumnavigates the globe with Humboldt, Darwin, Wallace, and Bates. Prodigious collectors of bugs, birds, and anything else that moved, these men spent years - decades even - away from home, endured shipwreck, disease and deprivation in the pursuit of knowledge. With first-hand accounts, Sean Carroll recreates the first epic voyages that gathered the data that forged the theory of evolution. HE then examines the discoveries that confirmed the evolution revolution, looking at paleontology's loveliest bones - 600 million years of natural history as revealed by the magnificent museum of fossils contained within the Earth's crust. Having mined the Earth, he turns to the laboratory, where powerful new technologies are currently delving into the DNA record of life, revealing the secrets of human evolution.
Captivating and lucid, Remarkable Creatures tells the exhilarating story of the scientists who walked where no others had walked, saw what no one else had seen, and thought what no one else had thought. It is a celebration of the infinite miracle of life and the quest to understand it.

Edition details

• Publisher: Quercus Publishing
• Publication date: 2009
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1847247210
• ISBN 13: 9781847247216
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 240