Böcker av Richard Fortey

'In Richard Fortey's capable hands the humble grey trilobite has been transformed into the E.T. of the Lower Palaeozoic - a remarkable and fascinating book.' SIMON WINCHESTER

What makes a scientist?

This ebook edition does not include illustrations.An awe-inspiring journey through the eons and across the globe, in search of visible traces of evolution in the living creatures which have survived from earlier times and whose stories speak to us of seminal events in the history of life.The history of life on Earth is far older - and far odder - than many of us realise. In 'Survivors', acclaimed author Richard Fortey traces this history not through fossil records, but in the living stories of organisms that have survived nearly unchanged for hundreds of millions of years and whose existence today affords us tantalising glimpses of landscapes long vanished.For evolution has not obliterated its tracks. Scattered across the globe, strange and marvellous plants and animals have survived virtually unchanged since life first began. They range from humble algal mats dating back almost two billion years to hardy musk oxen, which linger as the last vestiges of Ice Age fauna.Following in Fortey's questing footsteps, 'Survivors' takes us on a fascinating journey to these ancient worlds. On a moonlit beach in Delaware where the horseshoe crab shuffles its way through a violent romance, we catch a glimpse of life 450 million years ago, shortly after it diversified on the ocean floor. Along a stretch of Australian coastline, we bear witness to the sights and sounds that would have greeted a Precambrian dawn. Finally, in the dense rainforests of New Zealand where the secretive velvet worm burrows into the rotting timber of the jungle floor, we marvel at a living fossil which has survived unchanged since before the dissolution of the Gondwana supercontinent.Written with Fortey's customary sparkle and gusto, this wonderfully engrossing exploration of the world's oldest flora and fauna brilliantly combines the best science writing about the origins of life with an explorer's sense of adventure and a poet's wonder at the natural world. Utterly compelling, eye-opening and awe-inspiring, this is a book for anyone with an interest in evolution, in nature, in the remarkable scope of geological time and our own modest interaction with it - in short, in life itself.

An exploration of time and place in which Fortey peels away the top layer of the land to reveal the hidden landscape - the rocks which contain the story of distant events. We travel with him as our guide throughout the British Isles and as the rocks change we learn to read the clues they contain.

This ebook edition does not include illustrations.'The Earth is a true delight: full of awe-inspiring details... it blends travel, history, reportage and science to creat an unforgettable picture of our ancient earth.' Sunday TimesThe face of the Earth, criss-crossed by chains of mountains like the scars of old wounds has changed constantly over billions of years, and the testament of the remote past is all around us.In this book, Richard Fortey teaches us how to read its character, laying out the dominions of the world before us. He shows how everything - human culture, natural history, even the shape of cities - roots back to a deeper geological truth. Far from being the driest of sciences, he proves that geology informs all our lives in the most intimate way.Nothing in this book seems to be at rest. The surface of the Earth dilates and collapses; seas and mountains rise and fall; continents move. We climb the Alps, wallow in Icelandic hot springs, dive down to the ocean floor; we explore the barren rocks of Newfoundland, walk through the lush ecosystems of Hawaii, cross the salt flats of Oman and saunter along the San Andreas Fault. And Fortey is the ideal guide, his descriptions of natural beauty as memorable as the best travel-writers, his prose as gripping as the best novelist, his crystal-clear scientific explanations fascinating and often surprising.Note that it has not been possible to include the same picture content that appeared in the original print version.