Catalog Search Results
Author
Physical Desc
x, 336 pages, 8 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations (chiefly color) ; 22 cm
Language
English
Description
"Dip below the ocean's surface and you are soon confronted by forms of life that could not seem more foreign to our own: sea sponges, soft corals, and serpulid worms, whose rooted bodies, intricate geometry, and flower-like appendages are more reminiscent of plant life or even architecture than anything recognizably animal. Yet these creatures are our cousins. As fellow members of the animal kingdom -- the Metazoa -- they can teach us much about the...
Author
Physical Desc
xiii, 314 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm
Language
English
Description
"In a new theory they call "facilitated variation," Kirschner and Gerhart elevate the individual organism from a passive target of natural selection to a central player in the three-billion-year history of evolution. In clear, accessible language, the authors invite every reader to contemplate daring new ideas about evolution. By closing the major gap in Darwin's theory Kirschner and Gerhart also provide a timely scientific rebuttal to critics of...
Author
Physical Desc
xii, 267 pages : illustrations ; 22 cm
Language
English
Description
"The author of the best-selling Your Inner Fish, now gives us a lively and accessible account of the great transformations in the history of life, that enable us to further understand whether our presence on this planet is an accident or inevitable. The great transformations in the history of life brought about whole scale shifts in how animals live and how their bodies are organized: the evolution of fish to land-living creature, the origin of birds,...
Author
Physical Desc
vii, 358 pages ; 25 cm
Language
English
Description
"This book is about one of the great zoological wonders of the world. No, it's not about the tears of the elephant, the smile of the dolphin, or the politics of the chimpanzee. It is about a scrawny, brainy ape with the habit of helping strangers, at times even risking life and limb to do so. It's about you and me, and how we treat everybody else. In short, it answers one of the biggest questions science has ever faced: Why do we give a damn about...
Author
Physical Desc
xvi, 461 pages, 8 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations ; 24 cm
Language
English
Appears on list
Description
"Nonpareil science writer David Quammen explains how recent discoveries in molecular biology can change our understanding of evolution and life's history, with powerful implications for human health and even our own human nature. In the mid-1970s, scientists began using DNA sequences to reexamine the history of all life. Perhaps the most startling discovery to come out of this new field -- the study of life's diversity and relatedness at the molecular...
Author
Physical Desc
480 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm
Language
English
Description
"This fascinating scientific foray into the animal kingdom examines how the world's creatures-- weird, wonderful, and everything in between-- are inextricably linked." -- Amazon.com.
Life on Planet Earth is not weirder than we imagine. It's weirder than we are capable of imagining. And we're all in it together: humans, blue whales, rats, birds of paradise, ridiculous numbers of beetles, molluscs the size of a bus, the sexual gladiators of slugs,...
Author
Language
English
Formats
Description
"Many animals and plants eke out seemingly unremarkable lives. Passive, constrained, modest, threatened. Then, in a blink of evolutionary time, they flourish spectacularly. Once we start to look, these "sleeping beauties" crop up everywhere. But why? Looking at the book of life, from apex predators to keystone crops, and informed by his own cutting-edge experiments, renowned scientist Andreas Wagner demonstrates that innovations can come frequently...
31) Evolution
Author
Series
Physical Desc
72 pages : illustrations (some color), color map ; 29 cm + 1 clip art CD-ROM (4 3/4 in.) + 1 wall chart.
Language
English
Description
Text about and photography of experiments, animals, plants, bones, and fossils reveal the ideas and discoveries that have changed our understanding of the natural world and how life began.
Author
Physical Desc
x, 337 pages ; 25 cm
Language
English
Description
"Any reader of science fiction or viewer of Star Trek will be awake to the dream that there may be life elsewhere in our universe that isn't like life here on Earth. Maybe, like E.T., it has new letters in its genetic alphabet! Maybe it's made of silicon! Maybe it gets around on wheels! Or maybe it doesn't. In The Equations of Life, biologist Charles Cockell makes the surprising argument that the Universe constrains life, making its evolutionary outcomes...
Author
Physical Desc
xv, 368 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm
Language
English
Description
A Harvard museum curator draws on the latest breakthroughs in evolutionary biology to examine how tiny, random convergences, from mutations to butterfly sneezes, have triggered remarkable evolutionary changes.
"Earth's natural history is full of fascinating instances of convergence: phenomena like eyes and wings and tree-climbing lizards that have evolved independently, multiple times. But evolutionary biologists also point out many examples of contingency,...
Author
Physical Desc
xiii, 367 pages, 8 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations ; 24 cm
Language
English
Description
"Brian Hare, dog researcher, evolutionary anthropologist, and founder of the Duke Canine Cognition Center, and Vanessa Woods offer revolutionary new insights into dog intelligence and the interior lives of our smartest pets. In the past decade, we have learned more about how dogs think than in the last century. Breakthroughs in cognitive science, pioneered by Brian Hare have proven dogs have a kind of genius for getting along with people that is unique...
Author
Physical Desc
252 pages ; 24 cm
Language
English
Description
"We think of medical science and doctors as focused on treating conditions--whether it's a cough or an aching back. But the sicknesses and complaints that cause us to seek medical attention actually have deeper origins than the superficial germs and behaviors we regularly fault ... Jeremy Taylor [argues that] we can trace the roots of many medical conditions through our evolutionary history, revealing what has made us susceptible to certain illnesses...
Author
Physical Desc
ix, 271 pages : illustrations ; 26 cm
Language
English
Description
"This pathbreaking book explores how life can begin, taking us from cosmic clouds of stardust, to volcanoes on Earth, to the modern chemistry laboratory. Seeking to understand life's connection to the stars, David Deamer introduces astrobiology, a new scientific discipline that studies the origin and evolution of life on Earth and relates it to the birth and death of stars, planet formation, interfaces between minerals, water, and atmosphere, and...
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