Just 150 years ago, most of our world was an unexplored wilderness. Our sense of its age was vastly off the mark. And what we believed to be the history of our own species consisted of fantastic myths and fairy tales; fossils, known for millennia, were seen as the bones of dragons and other imagined creatures. How did we learn so much so quickly? Remarkable Creatures celebrates the pioneers who replaced our fancies with the even more remarkable real story of how our world evolved.
Inspired by Humboldt, the first group we meet ? Darwin, Wallace, and Bates ? returned from their explorations with the makings of the theory of evolution. The second group undertook expeditions that produced some of the most spectacular finds in paleontology: Eugene Dubois uncovered Java Man, the first claimed missing link between apes and humans; Charles Walcott located pre-Cambrian life in the Grand Canyon and Cambrian life in the Burgess Shale; and Roy Chapman Andrews unearthed dinosaur eggs in the Gobi desert of Mongolia. The discovery of the kinship of dinosaurs and birds and the emergence of the "fishapod" formed more links in the evolutionary chain, as did the work of Louis and Mary Leakey, who for five decades searched for our deepest past in East Africa. The final section of the book moves into the laboratory and the future, following the trailblazers who discovered a time clock in our DNA and extracted ancient DNA from extinct species.
Join Carroll and his cast of naturalists for a rousing voyage through the most dramatic adventures and important discoveries in two centuries of natural history.
Enjoy a step-by-step revelation of how scientists discovered and fortified the best-proven law of biological processes--evolution. Not until the mid-nineteenth century did Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace simultaneously reveal their idea that life forms had changed in response to the environment, a process they called "survival of the fittest." Later researchers discovered the genetic mechanisms and catholic impact of this idea on all living things. Although narrator Jim Bond masters the scientific vocabulary and has a suitable talent for nonfiction, he commits the greatest sin of public speaking--dropping words by drastic modulation of his volume. Words and even phrases disappear from the middle and ends of sentences. Listening in total silence helps, but not all audiobook aficionados have that luxury. J.A.H. (c) AudioFile 2009, Portland, Maine
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, U.S. News & World Report" and "The New York Times", and Carroll himself has written articles for "Natural History" and "Playboy". His first book, "Endless Forms Most Beautiful: The New Science of Evo Devo", was a 2005 Top Popular Science Book of the Year ("USA Today"). He and his wife and children reside in Madison, Wisconsin.
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