Origins
eBook - ePub

Origins

The Search for Our Prehistoric Past

  1. 344 pages
  2. English
  3. ePUB (mobile friendly)
  4. Available on iOS & Android
eBook - ePub

Origins

The Search for Our Prehistoric Past

About this book

"Fossils are the fragments from which, piece by laborious piece, the great mosaic of the history of life has been constructed. Here and there, we can supplement these meager scraps by the use of biochemical markers or geochemical signatures that add useful information, but, even with such additional help, our reconstructions and our models of descent are often tentative. For the fossil record is, as we have seen, as biased as it is incomplete. But fragmentary, selective, and biased though it is, the fossil record, with all its imperfections, is still a treasure. Though whole chapters are missing, many pages lost, and the earliest pages so damaged as to be, as yet, virtually unreadable, this—the greatest biography of all—is one in whose closing pages we find ourselves."—from Origins

In Origins, Frank H. T. Rhodes explores the origin and evolution of living things, the changing environments in which they have developed, and the challenges we now face on an increasingly crowded and polluted planet. Rhodes argues that the future well-being of our burgeoning population depends in no small part on our understanding of life's past, its long and slow development, and its intricate interdependencies.

Rhodes's accessible and extensively illustrated treatment of the origins narrative describes the nature of the search for prehistoric life, the significance of geologic time, the origin of life, the emergence and spread of flora and fauna, the evolution of primates, and the emergence of modern humans.

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Yes, you can access Origins by Frank H. T. Rhodes in PDF and/or ePUB format, as well as other popular books in Physical Sciences & Zoology. We have over one million books available in our catalogue for you to explore.

Table of contents

  1. Preface
  2. Acknowledgments
  3. 1. Defrosting the Mammoth
  4. 2. Terrestrial Timepieces
  5. 3. “From So Simple a Beginning”
  6. 4. Classification: The Diversity of Life
  7. 5. Spineless Wonders
  8. 6. Bone, Scales, and Fins: The Early Vertebrates
  9. 7. The Greening of the Land
  10. 8. The Amphibian Foothold
  11. 9. The Reign of the Reptiles
  12. 10. The Air
  13. 11. The Blossoming Earth
  14. 12. The Rise of the Mammals
  15. 13. The Mammalian Explosion
  16. 14. The Leakeys’ Legacy
  17. 15. “Endless Forms, Most Beautiful and Most Wonderful”
  18. 16. On Extinction
  19. 17. “Have Been and Are Being Evolved”: The Development of Life
  20. Epilogue
  21. Notes
  22. Glossary
  23. Related Reading
  24. Index