Tuesday 11 October 2011

Book recommendation - 'Written in Stone'

A reader has recommended 'Written in Stone; the hidden secrets of fossils and the story of life on Earth' by Brian Switek 
This book gives the first popular account of the remarkable discovery of these fossils and how they have changed our perspective of the tree of life. Only now, with the marriage of palaeontology with genetics and embryology, can such a comprehensive story be given. One hundred and fifty years after the publication of Darwin’s 'Origin', scientists are finally beginning to understand how whales walked into the sea, how horses stood up on their tip-toes, how feathered dinosaurs took to the air and how our own ancestors came down from the trees. As this book shows, there is much still to discover and debates will continue, but this is truly a golden age for those looking to reconstruct the past.

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