Kategoria BISAC: Science >> Life Sciences - Evolution

Even geniuses change their minds sometimes.

Edge (www.edge.org), the influential online intellectual salon, recently asked 150 high-powered thinkers to discuss their most telling missteps and reconsiderations: What have you changed your mind about? The answers are brilliant, eye-opening, fascinating, sometimes shocking, and certain to kick-start countless passionate debates.

Steven Pinker on the future of human evolution - Richard Dawkins on the mysteries of courtship - SAM HARRIS on the indifference of Mother Nature - Nassim Nicholas Taleb on the irrelevance of probability -...

"Terra is one of the important books of our time--and it will change the way you think about the world." --Neil Shubin, Provost, Field Museum of Natural History

The natural world as humans have always known it evolved close to 100 million years ago with the appearance of flowering plants and pollinating insects during the age of the dinosaurs. Its tremendous history is now in danger of profound, catastrophic disruption. In this brilliant synthesis of evolutionary biology, paleontology, and modern environmental science, Michael Novacek shows how we can understand and...

A gripping story of obsession, adventure and the search for our oldest surviving ancestor - 400 million years old - a four-limbed dinofish

In 1938, Marjorie Courtenay-Latimer, a young South African museum curator, caught sight of a specimen among a fisherman's trawl that she knew was special. With limb-like protuberances culminating in fins the strange fish was unlike anything she had ever seen. The museum board members dismissed it as a common lungfish, but when Marjorie eventually contacted Professor JLB Smith, he immediately identified her fish as a coelacanth - a species known...

This unique reference work presents the first comprehensive taxonomy of Coryphantha, with a complete key to the genus. It contains a new taxonomic classification of all 43 species and 11 subspecies, with morphological and ecological descriptions. These cacti, which grow in Mexico and southern USA, are characterized by their typical grooved tubercles and large flowers.
The book is the result of many years of viewing the literature and fieldwork by the author team and their ongoing commitment to map out the nomenclature of this genus. During this process, the authors even discovered some...

In an age of increasing environmental problems, ecology has had to grow up fast from a discipline dealing with relatively simple interactions between species to one that tries to explain changes in global patterns of diversity and richness. The issues are complex. Every species may seem to have its own unique role, but if that is true, then why are there hundreds of species of plankton in an ecosystem with only a handful of niches? The tropics have a high biodiversity, but does anybody know why? And how can a single introduced tree species wreak havoc in Hawaii s rainforests, when it is...