Telmo Pievani is Full Professor in the Department of Biology at the University of Padua, where he covers the first Italian chair of Philosophy of Biological Sciences. A leading science communicator and columnist for Il corriere della sera, he is the author of The Unexpected Life, Creation without God, Serendipity, and other books.
I loved this book because I think it is a masterpiece on the contingency of evolution and our presence.
Rewind the tape of life and times and you will get different endings: that’s a great message of freedom for me. The epic of diversity that led to the explosion of multicellular life forms in the early Cambrian concerns us too. Unmissable.
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.
I’ve been mad about dinosaurs and ancient life since I was seven. I have been amazingly lucky to be able to develop a career as a professional palaeontologist and to be able to research and talk about the subject. We were first to show the original colours of dinosaur feathers, and this discovery provides a perfect way to open the discussion about how palaeontologists know what they say they know. In my books, I seek to amaze, amuse and inform. I have written many books, including pop science, textbooks, technical-scientific works, and books for children, and every year brings new discoveries to be transmitted to the world.
The books so far are more for adults than children, although many children show remarkable powers of reading and learning with any dinosaur book. But this one is aimed at children, and it’s comprehensive and up-to-date.
Dinosaur fans love lists and catalogues, and they want a book that has everything. This is probably the best such book, and it packs in a huge amount of material into its 300 pages.
Travel back in time to learn about every kind of dinosaur with this comprehensive dinosaur book for children.
With nearly 400,000 copies sold Dinosaurs: A Children's Encyclopedia is a global best-seller. It includes detailed fact files and colour illustrations of more than 320 species.
Discover the biggest, the scariest, and the strangest animals ever to inhabit our world, from Triceratops and Tyrannosaurus to horse-eating prehistoric birds and giant millipedes the size of crocodiles. Find out exactly where and when each animal lived, how large it grew, and how it captured prey or fought off enemies. Expert-verified reconstructions reveal what each…
An acclaimed scientist, teacher, and writer, Andrew Knoll has travelled the world for decades, investigating ancient rocks to understand the intertwined histories of our planet and the life it supports. His boyhood thrill at discovering fossils has never deserted him. It continues to motivate him to explore topics that range from the earliest records of life and the emergence of an oxygen-rich atmosphere; the diversification of both plants and animals, and the intricacies of mass extinctions, past and present. He has also participated in NASA’s exploration of Mars.
It’s one thing to appreciate that fossils record the history of life, but something else altogether to understand how we came to know that. Rudwick’s classic book recounts the discoveries, large and small, that over centuries revealed fossils to be remnants of lost worlds. An exceptional exercise in the history of science. The Meaning of Fossils is required reading for students of paleontology.
"It is not often that a work can literally rewrite a person's view of a subject. And this is exactly what Rudwick's book should do for many paleontologists' view of the history of their own field."-Stephen J. Gould, Paleobotany and Palynology
"Rudwick has not merely written the first book-length history of palaeontology in the English language; he has written a very intelligent one. . . . His accounts of sources are rounded and organic: he treats the structure of arguments as Cuvier handled fossil bones."-Roy S. Porter, History of Science
I’m an avid reader of fiction and kind of a nerd, too, so I love books with science in them. I’m a scientist myself, now retired from a career in environmental and engineering geology. I am fascinated by the Earth and the geologic processes that shape it, from the seemingly mundane (like erosion) to the remarkable (like earthquakes, landslides, and volcanic eruptions). As a writer, I try to translate that wonder for non-scientist readers, all wrapped up in a compelling story. Each book on this list sure does that, weaving science into the fabric of a gripping narrative. I hope you’ll love them as much as I do.
I’m a geologist, and there is paleontology of the vertebrate variety (a dinosaur-ish fossil is involved) in the amazing title story of this collection. How could I not love it?
Memory Wall, a long short story, is as rich as any novel I have ever read. I turned the final page, wishing I could spend more time with its characters, especially a beautifully rendered father and son and the teenage boy who sought the fantastic fossil.
I could feel the stones being walked upon and smell the air after the rain—that’s how lush Doerr’s writing is. Part science in story (the paleontology I love), part science fiction (memory harvesting), and all so resonant that I couldn’t stop reading.
Set on four continents, Anthony Doerr's new collection of stories is about memory: the source of meaning and coherence in our lives, the fragile thread that connects us to ourselves and to others. In the luminous and beautiful title story, a young boy in South Africa comes to possess an old woman's secret, a piece of the past with the power to redeem a life. In 'The River Nemunas', a teenaged orphan moves from Kansas to Lithuania to live with her grandfather, and discovers a world in which myth becomes real. 'Village 113' is about the building of the Three…
Spend time with a young child, and
you’ll immediately notice how intrigued they are by the smallest, seemingly
insignificant things. A crack in the sidewalk. The glimmer of a shiny stone. A
pill bug scuttling across the dirt. Everything is cause for noticing, wondering,
and myriad questions.
Welcome to the Wonder House is the collaboration
of poet/teachers Georgia Heard and Rebecca Kai Dotlich. Their poetry invites
readers to wander and wonder, notice, ask questions, and reflect on rooms such
as time and place, curiosity and praise.
Luminous,
mixed-media illustrations by Deborah Freedman make the journey from room to room
to room a visual adventure of its own.
This collection of poems, creatively presented in the format of an allegorical house, will engage anyone who has ever wondered "why?" as it shows young readers that wonder is everywhere-in yourself and in the world around you.
Welcome to the Wonder House, a place to explore the cornerstone of every great thinker-a sense of wonder. This Wonder House has many rooms-one for nature, one for quiet, and one for mystery, among others. Each room is filled with poems and objects covering a wide variety of STEAM topics, including geology, paleontology, physics, astronomy, creative writing, and drawing, that will inspire curiosity…
Since childhood, growing up in a family with spiritualist beliefs, I’ve been fascinated with mysterious phenomena. Once I became a little older, and my childhood love of zoos, museums, and dinosaurs became a broader love of science, I began to re-examine certain fantastic claims and beliefs with a skeptical lens. I became fascinated not only with the subject of certain beliefs, but the reason we as humans have these beliefs. The study of ghosts, monsters, or UFOs is really a study of the human condition and our belief systems. It’s the exploration of the human side that motivates the characters in my books and my continued interest in mysterious phenomena.
Hunting Monsters zeroes in on some of the more mysterious creatures said to haunt our forests, lakes, and the deep ocean. Darren Naish brings his expertise in zoology and paleontology to the world of cryptids such as Bigfoot and the Loch Ness Monster. Naish, the scientific advisor for Prehistoric Planet, examines both the scientific credibility of creature sightings as well as the culture that influences our belief in mysterious animals. This well-written and fascinating book leaves readers not only with a better understanding of contemporary myths involving cryptids, but zoology as well.
The Loch Ness Monster. The Yeti. Bigfoot. These are just some of the iconic mythical creatures studied by the discipline of 'cryptozoology'.
The idea of mysterious and terrifying creatures goes back centuries. They are known by the experts as cryptids. Today, these legendary beings continue to capture our imaginations.
Discover the fascinating and often bizarre stories of real life monsters and the scientists who strove to separate the fact from fiction.
In Hunting Monsters, Palaeozoological researcher Professor Darren Naish explores the fascinating science behind these elusive monsters - a science known as 'cryptozoology'. Bizarre stories of ancient sea-monsters and resurgent…
I am a scientist who has worked at the coal face of the debate around the origin of animals and ‘Snowball Earth’ his entire career, using a combination of experimental and descriptive science. Over three decades, I have witnessed first-hand how careful attention to detail in study after study has removed doubt from once provocative, even crazy, ideas that are now widely accepted. I love reading popular science from the perspective of the hands-on scientist who has witnessed the debate first-hand and contributed to received knowledge by conceiving new experiments, amassing data, and, more than often, in entirely unexpected ways through sheer curiosity.
I love this book because of the author’s infectious passion for fossils and geology.
The book reads like a detective story, with the innermost secrets of long-extinct animal groups unveiled bit by bit by a master of forensic paleontology.
When I was an undergraduate student over 40 years ago, Richard showed us behind the scenes at the Natural History Museum in London. What I remember most was him describing how long it took his team to reveal just one trilobite eye. Only after many months of painstaking attention to detail were they finally able to work out how a trilobite saw the world 500 million years ago.
With Trilobite, Richard Fortey, paleontologist and author of the acclaimed Life, offers a marvelously written, smart and compelling, accessible and witty scientific narrative of the most ubiquitous of fossil creatures.
Trilobites were shelled animals that lived in the oceans over five hundred million years ago. As bewilderingly diverse then as the beetle is today, they survived in the arctic or the tropics, were spiky or smooth, were large as lobsters or small as fleas. And because they flourished for three hundred million years, they can be used to glimpse a less evolved world of ancient continents and vanished oceans. Erudite…
I am, like so many other young people (yes, I still think of myself as young!), fascinated with dinosaurs and prehistory, and have been for as long as I can remember. What I really find interesting and engaging is the combination of the fact that they do not exist anymore and therefore are otherworldly with the fact that they are real and actually of this world!
While there are of course other books with more and better textual content, this book is an impressive work of pop-up art. I particularly like pop-up of the perennially favorite T. Rex, which quite literally jumps out of the book at you as you turn the page. Very well done.
From renowned pop-up masters Robert Sabuda and Matthew Reinhart comes an awe-inspiring tribute to the world's most beloved extinct animals and their 180-million-year reign on our planet.
Open this book and a massive T. REX springs out, flashing a startling jawful of jagged teeth. Turn the next spread and a ravishing raptor unfurls and appears to fly off the edge of the page. Inside the amazing ENCYCLOPEDIA PREHISTORICA: DINOSAURS are "shield bearers" in full-body armor, creatures with frilly headgear, and weighty, long-necked giants. There are even amusing tidbits on the history of paleontology itself — like a pop-up version of…
Dougal Dixon graduated from the University of St. Andrews with two degrees in geology. But although his education was entirely scientific his background was deeply artistic – a potentially unemployable combination back in the ‘70s. And so he ended up in publishing, as the Earth Science editor for an illustrated encyclopedia publisher. Since then he has become a full-time writer, specializing in geological articles for encyclopedias, handbooks on fossil collecting, and principally children’s books on dinosaurs. As well as that he has done a number of books on speculative evolution – exploring the principles of biology in novel ways.
The reason that many dinosaur restorations are inaccurate is mostly because the artists base them only on the bones and skeletons. In an interesting exercise the authors and artists here have taken modern animals and imagined how future palaeontologists would illustrate them on the same basis. An elephant has no trunk (the soft musclular material would not have fossilized). A humming bird is a vampire (its long narrow beak looks so much like a hypodermic needle). A manatee is a pig-like animal grazing on upland meadows (or so we would surmise if we only knew of its skull). As a contrast they take the traditional view of fossil animals and make perfectly reasonable predictions of their behaviour based on modern animal lifestyles. Hypsilophodon eats millipedes (although it was definitely a vegetarian - but most modern vegetarian animals eat the occasional meaty snack). Protoceratops climbs trees (although its feet show it…
All Yesterdays is a book about the way we see dinosaurs and other prehistoric animals. Lavishly illustrated with over sixty original artworks, All Yesterdays aims to challenge our notions of how prehistoric animals looked and behaved. As a critical exploration of palaeontological art, All Yesterdays asks questions about what is probable, what is possible, and what is commonly ignored. Written by palaeozoologist Darren Naish, and palaeontological artists John Conway and C.M. Kosemen, All Yesterdays is scientifically rigorous and artistically imaginative in its approach to fossils of the past - and those of the future.
Life really is stranger than fiction, and some of the stuff served up by evolution is outrageously bizarre. There are one-celled creatures that make rats want to cozy up to cats, a parasitic worm that turns snails into “disco zombies” and an ape that communicates across continents by pushing keys to create rows and columns of pixels. I’m fascinated by all of these creatures and love writing books for children about evolutionary biology, especially the evolution of intelligence. Besides authoring How to Build a Human, I’ve written about the evolution of intelligence in dolphins (The Dolphins of Shark Bay) and crows (Crow Smarts: Inside the Brain of the World’s Brightest Bird).
This superb picture book for children aged 6 to 9 begins by asking children to wonder why dolphins and sharks look superficially similar, yet are less closely related than dolphins and hippos. It covers the emergence of life, evolution in the seas, the appearance of land animals, and the “return to the blue” by dolphins and whales. The illustrations are terrific: bright, simple, and kid-friendly while retaining scientific details.
Graceful, succinct prose and engaging illustrations trace the evolution of life on Earth out of the blue and back again.
Clear and inviting nonfiction prose, vetted by scientists—together with lively illustrations and a time line—narrate how life on Earth emerged “out of the blue.” It began in the vast, empty sea when Earth was young. Single-celled microbes too small to see held the promise of all life-forms to come. Those microbes survived billions of years in restless seas until they began to change, to convert sunlight into energy, to produce oxygen until one day—Gulp!—one cell swallowed another, and the race…
