"Humans are a puzzling species. On the one hand, we struggle to survive on our own in the wild, often failing to overcome even basic challenges, like obtaining food, building shelters, or avoiding predators. On the other hand, human groups have produced ingenious technologies, sophisticated languages, and complex institutions that have permitted us to successfully expand into a vast range of diverse environments. What has enabled us to dominate the...

In Kindred, Neanderthal expert Rebecca Wragg Sykes shoves aside the cliché of the shivering ragged figure in an icy wasteland, and reveals the Neanderthal you don't know, our ancestor who lived across vast and diverse tracts of Eurasia and survived through hundreds of thousands of years of massive climate change. This book sheds new light on where they lived, what they ate, and the increasingly complex Neanderthal culture that researchers have discovered....

"Dinosaurs to Chickens: How Evolution Works explains how evolution works using thirty of the most remarkable stories in biological history. Over 125 curious creatures--including some that no longer exist!"--Page 4 of cover.

"This timely and compelling anthology is a rousing call-to-action for all of us to help transform the world into a just, peaceful, and thriving one-featuring creative and practical solutions to the many crises facing humanity today. Humanity is currently facing a series of interconnected emergencies that threaten our very survival-from climate change to economic inequality and beyond. And yet, at the same time, a global shift towards harnessing our...

Describes the early cooperative relationships between Ice Age humans and dogs as well as human society's later efforts to domesticate and control dog species through reproduction, revealing how dogs and humans impacted each other's evolution.

In her virtuosic debut, Ghostwalk, Rebecca Stott unfolded an extraordinary and true mystery involving Isaac Newton and set in seventeenth-century Cambridge. The Coral Thief is another intriguing mystery and love story, centering on pre-Darwinian theories of evolution and set in Paris right after Napoleon's surrender at Waterloo. Upon his arrival in Paris, where he has come to study anatomy, Daniel Connor, a young medical student from Edinburgh, finds...

"From frogs, toads, newts, and salamanders, to the lesser-known caecilians, there are over 8,000 species of amphibians alive today. Characterized by their moist, naked skin and the tadpole phase of their lives, they are uniquely adapted to occupy the interphase habitat between freshwater and land. This Very Short Introduction looks at amphibian evolution, adaptations, and biology. Exploring topics from their complex courtship behaviour to how their...

"The Evolution of Birds explores what we know about bird evolution, from theories of the past to recent breakthroughs in research. This title also looks at the science behind the research, from studying fossils to analyzing DNA" -- www.abdobooks.com

"The unique relationship between dogs and humans has had huge evolutionary consequences, changing the physical, behavioral, genetic, and emotional characteristics of both species. Pat Shipman looks to fossil records and new evidence to trace how the process of domestication worked and discovers how much of ourselves we owe to our canine companions"--

With ecologist Anne Sverdrup-Thygeson as our intrepid guide, Extraordinary Insects is an enthusiastic, witty, and fascinating introduction to the world of insects and why we -- an the planet we inhabit -- could not survive without them. Insects comprise roughly half of the animal kingdom. They live everywhere -- deep inside caves, high in the Himalayas, inside computers, in Yellowstone's hot springs, and in the ears and nostrils of much larger creatures....