"This book is designed to take you on a journey through time as it explores the unique fossil record of the Jurassic Coast. It describes how life here changed and evolved during the Mesozonic Era and how fossils can be used to unlock Earth's history. As a guide it will help you to explore the World Heritage Site to discover these stories for yourself"--Page 2 de la couverture (verso de la première de couverture).
A guidebook to 30 walks on the Jurassic Coast of Devon and Dorset. Covering the coast between Exmouth and Bournemouth, the walks are suitable for most walkers, with shorter routes alongside plenty of more challenging, full-day hikes. The walks range in length from 5 to 24km (3–16 miles) and can be enjoyed in 2–8 hours. The majority of the routes hug the shoreline between Torbay and Swanage, while others venture inland on the Dorset Downs. 1:50,000 OS maps are included for each walk GPX files available to download The geology of this World Heritage Coastline is brought to life with timelines and cross-sections Local points of interest include Lulworth Cove and Chesil Beach
At a time when women were excluded from science, a young girl made a discovery that marked the birth of paleontology and continues to feed the debate about evolution to this day. Mary Anning was only twelve years old when, in 1811, she discovered the first dinosaur skeleton--of an ichthyosaur--while fossil hunting on the cliffs of Lyme Regis, England. Until Mary's incredible discovery, it was widely believed that animals did not become extinct. The child of a poor family, Mary became a fossil hunter, inspiring the tongue-twister, "She Sells Sea Shells by the Seashore." She attracted the attention of fossil collectors and eventually the scientific world. Once news of the fossils reached the halls of academia, it became impossible to ignore the truth. Mary's peculiar finds helped lay the groundwork for Charles Darwin's theory of evolution, laid out in his On the Origin of Species. Darwin drew on Mary's fossilized creatures as irrefutable evidence that life in the past was nothing like life in the present. A story worthy of Dickens, The Fossil Hunter chronicles the life of this young girl, with dirt under her fingernails and not a shilling to buy dinner, who became a world-renowned paleontologist. Dickens himself said of Mary: "The carpenter's daughter has won a name for herself, and deserved to win it." Here at last, Shelley Emling returns Mary Anning, of whom Stephen J. Gould remarked, is "probably the most important unsung (or inadequately sung) collecting force in the history of paleontology," to her deserved place in history.
From the New York Times bestselling novelist, a stunning historical novel that follows the story of Mary Anning and Elizabeth Philpot, two extraordinary 19th century fossil hunters who changed the scientific world forever. On the windswept, fossil-strewn beaches of the English coast, poor and uneducated Mary learns that she has a unique gift: "the eye" to spot ammonites and other fossils no one else can see. When she uncovers an unusual fossilized skeleton in the cliffs near her home, she sets the religious community on edge, the townspeople to gossip, and the scientific world alight. After enduring bitter cold, thunderstorms, and landslips, her challenges only grow when she falls in love with an impossible man. Mary soon finds an unlikely champion in prickly Elizabeth, a middle-class spinster who shares her passion for scouring the beaches. Their relationship strikes a delicate balance between fierce loyalty, mutual appreciation, and barely suppressed envy, but ultimately turns out to be their greatest asset. From the author of At the Edge of the Orchard and Girl With a Pearl Earring comes this incredible story of two remarkable women and their voyage of discovery.
This book is intended to be the most complete and up-to-date guide to the geology and fossils of the New Forest, providing a wealth of information of interest to both the amateur fossil collector and the professional geologist. It includes some 200 field photographs, palaeogeographic maps, digitised borehole/outcrop logs, and geological cross sections. Also included is a tour of the regional geological evolution of southern England since the Permian Period (-280 million years ago), based on deep boreholes and coastal exposures, including the world-famous Jurassic coast of Dorset and east Devon. The author discusses the petroleum geology of southern England and the New Forest and gives a detailed overview of the stratigraphy of the Hampshire Basin, followed by related aspects of economic geology within this area, including ironstones, freshwater aquifers, geothermal energy, sand, clay and peat resources. Finally, there is an up-to-date and complete account of the principal fossil localities, together with a comprehensive gallery of photographs with accompanying descriptions of the most abundant fossils within the New Forest National Park.
Fossils allow us to picture the forms of life that inhabited the earth eons ago. But we long to know more: how did these animals actually behave? We are fascinated by the daily lives of our fellow creatures—how they reproduce and raise their young, how they hunt their prey or elude their predators, and more. What would it be like to see prehistoric animals as they lived and breathed? From dinosaurs fighting to their deaths to elephant-sized burrowing ground sloths, this book takes readers on a global journey deep into the earth’s past. Locked in Time showcases fifty of the most astonishing fossils ever found, brought together in five fascinating chapters that offer an unprecedented glimpse at the real-life behaviors of prehistoric animals. Dean R. Lomax examines the extraordinary direct evidence of fossils captured in the midst of everyday action, such as dinosaurs sitting on their eggs like birds, Jurassic flies preserved while mating, a T. rex infected by parasites. Each fossil, he reveals, tells a unique story about prehistoric life. Many recall behaviors typical of animals familiar to us today, evoking the chain of evolution that links all living things to their distant ancestors. Locked in Time allows us to see that fossils are not just inanimate objects: they can record the life stories of creatures as fully alive as any today. Striking and scientifically rigorous illustrations by renowned paleoartist Bob Nicholls bring these breathtaking moments to life.
