Walk in the footsteps of the first fossil researchers to discover the earliest animal life on Earth. Explore whether dinosaurs had scales, fur, or feathers. Find out how fish learned to walk. This lively history combines storytelling with science to bring to life incredible creatures that once walked the Earth--the hallucigenia (a creature without tail or head), the tiktaalik (a walking fish), the plesiosaur (a peaceful sea dragon), and many more. Told with illustrations, comics, and facts, it shows how fossils tell a fascinating story about our oldest known species and how scientific thinking evolves.
This fascinating book tells the story of how one museum changed ideas about dinosaurs, dynasties, and even the story of life on earth. The Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History, now celebrating its 150th anniversary, has remade the way we see the world. Delving into the museum’s storied and colorful past, award-winning author Richard Conniff introduces a cast of bold explorers, roughneck bone hunters, and visionary scientists. Some became famous for wresting Brontosaurus, Triceratops, and other dinosaurs from the earth, others pioneered the introduction of science education in North America, and still others rediscovered the long-buried glory of Machu Picchu. In this lively tale of events, achievements, and scandals from throughout the museum’s history. Readers will encounter renowned paleontologist O. C. Marsh who engaged in ferocious combat with his “Bone Wars” rival Edward Drinker Cope, as well as dozens of other intriguing characters. Nearly 100 color images portray important figures in the Peabody’s history and special objects from the museum’s 13-million-item collections. For anyone with an interest in exploring, understanding, and protecting the natural world, this book will deliver abundant delights.
Reimagining Dinosaurs argues that transatlantic popular literature was critical for transforming the dinosaur into a cultural icon between 1880 and 1920
These hilarious fictional diaries put us inside the heads of hapless figures from history. Meet Roderick – a scrawny, unremarkable teenager keeping a diary of his life in the Middle Ages. When he’s chosen to become a knight on a quest to find a holy relic (the fingers of St Stephen), Roderick is determined to prove his honour and graduate from zero to hero. ‘Get Real’ fact boxes feature throughout, providing historical context and further information, as well as a timeline, historical biographies and a glossary in the end matter.
The Grand Staircase region, located in Southern Utah, is highly regarded as one of the best places in the world to study the period near the end of the Age of Dinosaurs--a time called the Late Cretaceous. In a relatively short period (geologically speaking) of about 25 million years, southern Utah was at times covered with an ocean teeming with life, swampy shorelines, and massive rivers draining a huge mountain range in the west. This diversity of plant and animal life has led to incredible fossil discoveries in the Late Cretaceous rocks, that have become a critical piece in a puzzle that stretches from Alaska to Mexico. In Where Dinosaurs Roamed, Christa Sadler looks at this important era in the history of life. Modern mammals, birds, and flowering plants were just getting their start, slowly gaining ground in the ecosystems of the time. Many of the fossils that paleontologists have found in southern Utah are unique: big, headline-grabbing creatures such as a dinosaur with fifteen horns; a distinctive cousin of Tyrannosaurus rex; a peculiar scissor-clawed dinosaur with feathers; and a thirty-foot long alligator relative. Add to this a host of smaller vertebrates, invertebrates, and plants, and paleontologists have been able to recreate entire ecosystems from the time between 74 and 100 million years ago. Altogether, these finds paint a picture of life in a very hot world, and may have lessons to teach us about our future world as well.
For most of us, the story of mammal evolution starts after the asteroid impact that killed the dinosaurs, but over the last 20 years scientists have uncovered new fossils and used new technologies that have upended this story. In Beasts Before Us, palaeontologist Elsa Panciroli charts the emergence of the mammal lineage, Synapsida, beginning at their murky split from the reptiles in the Carboniferous period, over three-hundred million years ago. They made the world theirs long before the rise of dinosaurs. Travelling forward into the Permian and then Triassic periods, we learn how our ancient mammal ancestors evolved from large hairy beasts with accelerating metabolisms to exploit miniaturisation, which was key to unlocking the traits that define mammals as we now know them. Elsa criss-crosses the globe to explore the sites where discoveries are being made and meet the people who make them. In Scotland, she traverses the desert dunes of prehistoric Moray, where quarry workers unearthed the footprints of Permian creatures from before the time of dinosaurs. In South Africa, she introduces us to animals, once called 'mammal-like reptiles', that gave scientists the first hints that our furry kin evolved from a lineage of egg-laying burrowers. In China, new, complete fossilised skeletons reveal mammals that were gliders, shovel-pawed Jurassic moles, and flat-tailed swimmers. This book radically reframes the narrative of our mammalian ancestors and provides a counterpoint to the stereotypes of mighty dinosaur overlords and cowering little mammals. It turns out the earliest mammals weren't just precursors, they were pioneers.
Sponsored by a grant from the National Science Foundation to the Denver Museum of Natural History. Ever wondered what the ground below you was like millions of years ago? Merging paleontology, geology, and artistry, Ancient Wyoming illustrates scenes from the distant past and provides fascinating details on the flora and fauna of the past 300 million years. The book provides a unique look at Wyoming, both as it is today and as it was throughout ancient history—at times a vast ocean, a lush rain forest, and a mountain prairie.
