Empfehlungen basierend auf "100 Things You Should Know about Mummies"

Join zoologist Mark Carwardine and Britain's best-loved wit and raconteur, Stephen Fry, as they follow in their great friend Douglas Adams' footsteps, in search of some of the rarest and most threatened animals on Earth. Twenty years ago, zoologist Mark Carwardine teamed up with the late Douglas Adams (author of The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy) and together they embarked on a groundbreaking expedition, travelling the globe in search of some of the world's most endangered animals. Now Mark has teamed up with one of Douglas's closest friends -- comic genius Stephen Fry -- to see how all those animals have been faring in the years since. In Last Chance to See, and the accompanying major BBC television series, we follow the unlikely duo on six separate journeys which take them from the steamy jungles of the Amazon to the ice-covered mountain tops of New Zealand and from the edge of a war zone in Central Africa to a sub-tropical paradise in the North Pacific. Along the way, they search for some of the weirdest, most remarkable and most troubled creatures on earth: a large, black, sleepy animal easily mistaken for an unusually listless mudbank, a parrot with a song like an unreleased collection of Pink Floyd studio outtakes, a rhino with square lips, a dragon with deadly saliva, an animal roughly the length of a Boeing 737 and the creature most likely to emerge from the cargo doors of a spaceship. A unique insight into the disappearing world around us, this is their hilarious, entertaining, informative and thought-provoking story.

A celebration of the diversity and evolution of birds, as depicted in the Cornell Lab of Ornithology's magnificent 2, 500-square-foot Wall of Birds mural by artist Jane Kim.Part homage, part artistic and sociological journey, The Wall of Birds tells the story of birds' remarkable 375-million-year evolution. With a foreword by John W. Fitzpatrick, director of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, and full of lush photographs of gorgeous life-size birds painted in exacting detail, The Wall of Birds lets readers explore these amazing creatures family by family and continent by continent. Throughout, beautifully crafted narratives and intimate artistic reflections tell of the evolutionary forces that created birds' dazzling variety of forms and colors, and reveal powerful lessons about birds that are surprisingly relevant to contemporary human challenges.From the tiny five-inch Marvelous Spatuletail hummingbird to the monstrous thirty-foot Yutyrannus, The Wall of Birds is a visual feast, essential for bird enthusiasts, naturalists, and art lovers alike.

"THE ULTIMATE DINOSAUR BIOGRAPHY," hails Scientific American: A thrilling new history of the age of dinosaurs, from one of our finest young scientists."A masterpiece of science writing." —Washington PostA New York Times Bestseller • Goodreads Choice Awards Winner • A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: Smithsonian, Science Friday, The Times (London), Popular Mechanics, Science News"This is scientific storytelling at its most visceral, striding with the beasts through their Triassic dawn, Jurassic dominance, and abrupt demise in the Cretaceous." —NatureThe dinosaurs. Sixty-six million years ago, the Earth’s most fearsome creatures vanished. Today they remain one of our planet’s great mysteries. Now The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs reveals their extraordinary, 200-million-year-long story as never before.In this captivating narrative (enlivened with more than seventy original illustrations and photographs), Steve Brusatte, a young American paleontologist who has emerged as one of the foremost stars of the field—naming fifteen new species and leading groundbreaking scientific studies and fieldwork—masterfully tells the complete, surprising, and new history of the dinosaurs, drawing on cutting-edge science to dramatically bring to life their lost world and illuminate their enigmatic origins, spectacular flourishing, astonishing diversity, cataclysmic extinction, and startling living legacy. Captivating and revelatory, The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs is a book for the ages.Brusatte traces the evolution of dinosaurs from their inauspicious start as small shadow dwellers—themselves the beneficiaries of a mass extinction caused by volcanic eruptions at the beginning of the Triassic period—into the dominant array of species every wide-eyed child memorizes today, T. rex, Triceratops, Brontosaurus, and more. This gifted scientist and writer re-creates the dinosaurs’ peak during the Jurassic and Cretaceous, when thousands of species thrived, and winged and feathered dinosaurs, the prehistoric ancestors of modern birds, emerged. The story continues to the end of the Cretaceous period, when a giant asteroid or comet struck the planet and nearly every dinosaur species (but not all) died out, in the most extraordinary extinction event in earth’s history, one full of lessons for today as we confront a “sixth extinction.”Brusatte also recalls compelling stories from his globe-trotting expeditions during one of the most exciting eras in dinosaur research—which he calls “a new golden age of discovery”—and offers thrilling accounts of some of the remarkable findings he and his colleagues have made, including primitive human-sized tyrannosaurs; monstrous carnivores even larger than T. rex; and paradigm-shifting feathered raptors from China.An electrifying scientific history that unearths the dinosaurs’ epic saga, The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs will be a definitive and treasured account for decades to come.Includes 75 images, world maps of the prehistoric earth, and a dinosaur family tree.

"teeming with fascinating and enlightening insights" Observer A narrative investigation into the new science of plant intelligence and sentience, from National Association of Science Writers Award winner and Livingston Award finalist Zoe Schlanger. Look at the green organism across the room or through the window: the potted plant, or the grass or a tree. Think how a life spent constantly growing yet rooted in a single spot comes with tremendous challenges. To meet them, plants have come up with some of the most creative methods for surviving of any living thing - us included. Many are so ingenious that they seem nearly impossible. Did you know plants can communicate when they are being eaten, allowing nearby plants to bolster their defences? They move and that movement stops when they are anaesthetised. They also use electricity for internal communication. They can hear the sounds of caterpillars eating. Plants can remember the last time they have been visited by a bee and how many times they have been visited - so they have a concept of time and can count. Plants can not only communicate with each other, they can also communicate with other species of plants and animals, allowing them to manipulate animals to defend or fertilise them. So look again at the potted plant, or the grass or the tree and wonder: are plants intelligent? Or perhaps ask an even more fundamental question: are they conscious? The Light Eaters will completely redefine how you think about plants. Packed with the most amazing stories of the life of plants it will open your eyes to the extraordinary green life forms we share the planet with.

Silver Medal, 2023 Nautilus Book Awards in the category of Ecology and Environment Amid environmental catastrophe, it is vital to recall what unites all forms of life. We share characteristics and genetic material extending back billions of years. More than that, we all—from humans to plants to bacteria—share a planet. We are all Earthlings. Adrian Parr calls on us to understand ourselves as existing with and among the many forms of Earthling life. She argues that human survival requires us to recognize our interdependent relationships with the other species and systems that make up life on Earth. In a series of meditations, Earthlings portrays the wonder and beauty of life with deep feeling, vivid detail, and an activist spirit. Parr invites readers to travel among the trees of the Amazonian rainforest; take flight with birds and butterflies migrating through the skies; and plunge into the oceans with whales and polar bears—as well as to encounter bodies infected with deadly viruses and maimed by the violence of global capitalism. Combining poetic observation with philosophical contemplation and scientific evidence, Parr offers a moving vision of a world in upheaval and a potent manifesto for survival. Earthlings is both a joyful celebration of the magnificence of the biosphere and an urgent call for action to save it.

Hailed a masterpiece when it was first published, the story of Gavin Maxwell's life with otters on the remote west coast of Scotland remains one of the most lyrical, moving descriptions of a man's relationship with the natural world. ""One of the outstanding wildlife books of all time.""-New York Herald Tribune First published 1960 by Longmans, Green & Co.

A photographic field guide to all the common and some unusual species of insects across Britain and Ireland that the keen amateur naturalist is likely to spot, this collection of 1,500 species is illustrated with detailed photographs chosen for their help in identification, including photographs of larvae. Each section is coded with a symbol for easy reference, and differences between similar species are highlighted to avoid confusion. Information is given on when to look and where to find each species. Insect groups dealt with include butterflies and moths, mayflies, dragonflies, damselflies, grasshoppers, crickets, earwigs, lacewings, bugs, bees, wasps, and ants and beetles, all with keys to ensure accurate identification.

When renowned British geneticist J. B. S. Haldane was asked what could be inferred about God from a study of his works, Haldane replied, “An inordinate fondness for beetles.” With 350,000 known species, and scientific estimates that millions more have yet to be identified, their abundance is indisputable as is their variety.  They range from the delightful summer firefly to the one-hundred-gram Goliath beetle. Beetles offer a dazzling array of shapes, sizes, and colors that entice scientists and collectors across the globe. The Book of Beetles celebrates the beauty and diversity of this marvelous insect. Six hundred significant beetle species are covered, with each entry featuring a distribution map, basic biology, conservation status, and information on cultural and economic significance. Full-color photos show the beetles both at their actual size and enlarged to show details, such as the sextet of spots that distinguish the six-spotted tiger beetle or the jagged ridges of the giant-jawed sawyer beetle. Based in the most up-to-date science and accessibly written, the descriptive text will appeal to researchers and armchair coleopterists alike. The humble beetle continues to grow in popularity, taking center stage in biodiversity studies, sustainable agriculture programs, and even the dining rooms of adventurous and eco-conscious chefs. The Book of Beetles is certain to become the authoritative reference on these remarkably adaptable and beautiful creatures.

The Sunday Times Bestseller A new, fully updated narrative edition of David Attenborough's seminal biography of our world, The Living Planet. Nowhere on our planet is devoid of life. Plants and animals thrive or survive within every extreme of climate and habitat that it offers. Single species, and often whole communities adapt to make the most of ice cap and tundra, forest and plain, desert, ocean and volcano. These adaptations can be truly extraordinary: fish that walk or lay eggs on leaves in mid-air; snakes that fly; flightless birds that graze like deer; and bears that grow hair on the soles of their feet.In The Living Planet, David Attenborough's searching eye, unfailing curiosity and infectious enthusiasm explain and illuminate the intricate lives of the these colonies, from the lonely heights of the Himalayas to the wild creatures that have established themselves in the most recent of environments, the city. By the end of this book it is difficult to say which is the more astonishing – the ingenuity with which individual species contrive a living, or the complexity of their interdependence on each other and on the habitations provided by our planet.In this new edition, the author, with the help of zoologist Matthew Cobb, has added all the most up-to-date discoveries of ecology and biology, as well as a full-colour 64-page photography section. He also addresses the urgent issues facing our living planet: climate change, pollution and mass extinction of species.

Reissue of J. A. Baker's extraordinary classic of British nature writing, with an exclusive new afterword by Robert Macfarlane. J. A. Baker's extraordinary classic of British nature writing was first published in 1967. Greeted with acclaim, it went on to win the Duff Cooper Prize, the pre-eminent literary prize of the time. Luminaries such as Ted Hughes, Barry Lopez and Andrew Motion have cited it as one of the most important books in twentieth-century nature writing. Despite the association of peregrines with the wild, outer reaches of the British Isles, The Peregrine is set on the flat marshes of the Essex coast, where J. A. Baker spent long winters looking and writing about the visitors from the uplands - peregrines that spend the winter hunting the huge flocks of pigeons and waders that share the desolate landscape with them. This new edition of the timeless classic, published to celebrate the 50th anniversary of its first publication, features an afterword by one of the book's greatest admirers, Robert Macfarlane.