Following the Tabby Trail provides a guided tour of some of the most significant tabby structures found along the southeastern coast and includes more than two hundred illustrations that highlight the human and architectural histories of forty-eight specific sites. Jingle Davis explains how tabby-a unique oyster-shell concrete-helps us to understand the complex past of the coast. A tabby structure is, as the author puts it, "a storehouse of history." Each of the site descriptions includes the intriguing profile of a historic figure associated in some way with the tabby. Though the first documented use of tabby in North America was in 1672 in what is now St. Augustine, Florida, Spanish colonists had used many of its constituent parts a century earlier. In addition to their Spanish-speaking competitors, colonizers from France and the British Isles also enthusiastically adopted the building material for their colonial missions. This meant, of course, that enslaved Africans and Indigenous peoples built with the material. Tabby remained a fashionable, effective, and enduring building material until shortly after the Civil War. This richly photographed work provides readers with a guide to the underexplored string of tabby structures still standing along the stretch of coast between Florida and South Carolina, an approximately 275-mile trail traced by the book from just south of St. Augustine north to the dead town of Dorchester near Summerville. Sites include such varied structures as ancient Late Archaic shell mounds called middens and rings of shells thousands of years old; Fort Matanzas, built in 1742 but named for a sixteenth-century massacre of French colonists by St. Augustine's Spanish founder Pedro Menendez de Aviles; Fort Mose, a significant feature of Florida's Black Heritage Trail; and homes of the enslaved, warehouses, Charleston's seawall, churches, and cemeteries.

Did you know that Illinois's state fossil is the weird-looking Tully Monster, which had eyes on a pair of stalks and an elephant-like trunk that ended in a toothed claw? Or that Idaho's state fossil is the stocky Hagerman horse, named for the town where its bones were found? Fossils can be found in every state, and this engaging guidebook brings these ancient organisms to life. Each state entry contains details about the state fossil; an illustration of what the vertebrate, invertebrate, or plant looked like; a photograph or drawing of the fossil; and a state map showing where it can be found. Potential fossil candidates are proposed for states that do not yet have official state fossils, along with instructions on how to get state fossils designated. An appendix lists museums and parks where these fossils can be studied first-hand, making the book a fun resource for fossil enthusiasts and future paleontologists of all ages.

With this collection of essays, Anthony J. Martin invites us to investigate animal and human traces on the Georgia coast and the remarkable stories these traces, both modern and fossil, tell us. Readers will learn how these traces enabled geologists to discover that the remains of ancient barrier islands still exist on the lower coastal plain of Georgia, showing the recession of oceans millions of years ago. First, Martin details a solid but approachable overview of Georgia barrier island ecosystems - maritime forests, salt marshes, dunes, beaches - and how these ecosystems are as much a product of plant and animal behavior as they are of geology. Martin then describes animal tracks, burrows, nests, and other traces and what they tell us about their makers. He also explains how trace fossils can document the behaviors of animals from millions of years ago, including those no longer extant. Next, Martin discusses the relatively scant history - scarcely five thousand years - of humans on the Georgia coast. He takes us from the Native American shell rings on Sapelo Island to the cobbled streets of Savannah paved with the ballast stones of slave ships. He also describes the human introduction of invasive animals to the coast and their effects on native species. Finally, Martin's epilogue introduces the sobering idea that climate change, with its resultant extreme weather and rising sea levels, is the ultimate human trace affecting the Georgia coast. Here he asks how the traces of the past and present help us to better predict and deal with our uncertain future.

The clearest and sharpest recognition guide to over 500 invertebrate, vertebrate, and plant fossils from around the world. This comprehensive pocket guide is the perfect introduction to finding, identifying, and collecting fossils. It features more than 500 species of plant and animal fossils, from trilobites and megafauna to dinosaurs and ancient trees. This handbook cuts through the complicated identification process with expertly written and thoroughly vetted text that features precise description, enabling you to recognize a species instantly. Over 1,000 photographs, with illuminating annotations, help you to pick out a fossil's chief characteristics and distinguishing features, while a colour illustration shows the fossil as a living plant or animal. The detailed introduction explains what a fossil is and how they are classified. Start building your own collection with advice on where to look for fossils, what tools and safety equipment are needed for collecting, and how best to organize a fossil collection. To help you in the initial stages of identification, this book provides a visual identification key that makes it easy to recognize a fossil and place it in its correct group. Finally, a concise glossary gives instant understanding of technical and scientific terms.

New Yorker magazine staff writer Paige Williams delves into the surprisingly perilous world of fossil collectors in this riveting true tale. In 2012, a New York auction catalogue boasted an unusual offering: 'a superb Tyrannosaurus skeleton'. In fact, Lot 49135 consisted of a nearly complete T. bataar - a close cousin to the more-famous T. rex - that had been unearthed in Mongolia. At 2.4 metres high and 7.3 metres long, the specimen was spectacular, and the winning bid was over $1 million. Eric Prokopi, a 38-year-old Floridian, had brought this extraordinary skeleton to market. A one-time swimmer who'd spent his teenage years diving for shark teeth, Prokopi's singular obsession with fossils fuelled a thriving business, hunting for, preparing, and selling specimens to clients ranging from natural-history museums to avid private collectors like Leonardo DiCaprio. But had Prokopi gone too far this time? As the T. bataar went to auction, a network of paleontologists alerted the government of Mongolia to the eye-catching lot. An international custody battle ensued, with Prokopi watching as his own world unravelled. The Dinosaur Artist is a stunning work of narrative journalism about humans' relationship with natural history, and about a seemingly intractable conflict between science and commerce. A story that stretches from Florida's Land O' Lakes to the Gobi Desert, The Dinosaur Artist illuminates the history of fossil collecting - a murky, sometimes risky business, populated by eccentrics and obsessives, where the lines between poacher and hunter, collector and smuggler, and enthusiast and opportunist can easily blur.

Explore the mineral-rich region of Wisconsin with veteran rockhound Robert Beard's Rockhounding Wisconsin and unearth the state's best rockhounding sites, ranging from popular and commercial sites to numerous lesser-known areas. Featuring an overview of the state's geologic history as well as a site-by-site guide to the best rockhounding locations, Rockhounding Wisconsin is the ideal resource for rockhounds of all ages and experience levels.

A fascinating exploration of exquisite images captured from natural materials, and of their applications in fashion, environmental design, and apps that anticipate a new era of digitally-driven individual creativity. Data From Nature begins with the chance encounter between an ammonite and a digital scanner and goes on to relate the author's growing immersion in the micro-scale beauty of minerals and--thanks to new digital means of production--their applications in wide areas of design. These include an award-winning range of silk scarves for Liberty of London (also sold in Saks Fifth Avenue); "frocks from rocks"; a striking architectural facade in London, and the transformation of his own house and garden using the latest digital techniques. Along the way we learn about how minerals form in the Earth; ways they have been admired and imagined from ancient civilizations to the dawn of Modernity; and discover how the inlaid surfaces of Renaissance cabinets of curiosity could inspire creative coloring and design apps intended to equip children and adults alike to participate creatively in the Digital Revolution. And as if all this weren't enough, the book ends as improbably as it started with a short biography of a "lost" (for which read "fictional") seventeenth-century artist, Carlo Alcite, whose "works" reveal powers of invention and draftsmanship worthy of a baroque master.

From the outback of Australia to the Gobi Desert of Mongolia and the savanna of Madagascar, the award-winning science writer and dinosaur enthusiast John Pickrell embarks on a world tour of new finds, meeting the fossil hunters who work at the frontier of discovery. He reveals the dwarf dinosaurs unearthed by an eccentric Transylvanian baron; an aquatic, crocodile-snouted carnivore bigger than T. rex that once lurked in North African waterways; a Chinese dinosaur with wings like a bat; and a Patagonian sauropod so enormous it weighed more than two commercial jet airliners. Other surprising discoveries hail from Alaska, Siberia, Canada, Burma, and South Africa. Why did dinosaurs grow so huge? How did they spread across the world? Did they all have feathers? What do sauropods have in common with 1950s vacuum cleaners? The stuff of adventure movies and scientific revolutions, Weird Dinosaurs examines the latest breakthroughs and new technologies that are radically transforming our understanding of the distant past. Pickrell opens a vivid portal to a brand-new age of fossil discovery, in which fossil hunters are routinely redefining what we know and how we think about prehistory's most iconic and fascinating creatures.

The story of one citizen's fight to preserve a US stake in the future of clean energy and the elements essential to high tech industries and national defense. American technological prowess used to be unrivaled. But because of globalization, and with the blessing of the U.S. government, once proprietary materials, components and technologies are increasingly commercialized outside the U.S. Nowhere is this more dangerous than in China's monopoly of rare earth elements-materials that are essential for nearly all modern consumer goods, gadgets and weapons systems. Jim Kennedy is a retired securities portfolio manager who bought a bankrupt mining operation. The mine was rich in rare earth elements, but he soon discovered that China owned the entire global supply and manufacturing chain. Worse, no one in the federal government cared. Dismayed by this discovery, Jim made a plan to restore America's rare earth industry. His plan also allowed technology companies to manufacture rare earth dependent technologies in the United States again and develop safe, clean nuclear energy. For years, Jim lobbied Congress, the Pentagon, the White House Office of Science and Technology, and traveled the globe to gain support. Exhausted, down hundreds of thousands of dollars, and with his wife at her wits' end, at the start of 2017, Jim sat on the edge of victory, held his breath and bet it all that his government would finally do the right thing. Like Beth Macy's Factory Man, this is the story of one man's efforts to stem the dehumanizing tide of globalization and Washington's reckless inaction. Jim's is a fight we need to join.

Beginner Instructions, Professional Results!Gemstones are naturally beautiful, but you can make them glisten and shine. This beginner's guide covers all the techniques you need to know: tumbling, cutting, face polishing and more. By following the authors' simple approach, you'll create finished stones worthy of displaying, selling or making into jewelry. Book Features: pertains to a wide range of popular gemstones, from agates to turquoise prevents frustration, with detailed photos and easy-to-follow instructions offers helpful tips from the authors' years of experience provides information about recommended equipment and supplies briefly introduces jewelry making, with seven simple jewelry projects

Rockhounding Colorado takes you to 100 of the best rockhounding sites in the state. Search for amethyst and quartz at the Crystal Hill Mine, check out the view at Douglas Pass while looking for leaf imprints and insect fossils, or head to Saint Peters Dome to uncover green, white, and purple fluorite.

This intimate portrait of the Colorado Plateau celebrates the landscape in photographs and writing. Erv Schroeder's photographs bear witness to the primordial forces of the earth--the raw power that moved and shifted huge hunks of rock to form natural stone sculptures. Schroeder's prints engage the viewer on an intimate level, acting as portals to contemplative worlds, inviting the viewer on an inner journey. As further guides to the landscape and its significance, he has invited indigenous writers--Natanya Ann Pulley, Rainy Dawn, Esther G. Belin, Orlando White, and Tacey M. Atsitty--to contribute poems that speak about these places. Celebrated Acoma storyteller Simon J. Ortiz introduces the photography and poetry with his musings on stone. In addition, an essay by geologist Marcia Bjornerud explores the geology of the region.

Plant remains can preserve a critical part of history of life on Earth. While telling the fascinating evolutionary story of plants and vegetation across the last 500 million years, this book also crucially offers non-specialists a practical guide to studying, dealing with and interpreting plant fossils. It shows how various techniques can be used to reveal the secrets of plant fossils and how to identify common types, such as compressions and impressions. Incorporating the concepts of evolutionary floras, this second edition includes revised data on all main plant groups, the latest approaches to naming plant fossils using fossil-taxa and techniques such as tomography. With extensive illustrations of plant fossils and living plants, the book encourages readers to think of fossils as once-living organisms. It is written for students on introductory or intermediate courses in palaeobotany, palaeontology, plant evolutionary biology and plant science, and for amateurs interested in studying plant fossils.

A lavishly illustrated, in-depth early history covering two thousand years of diamond jewelry and commerce, from the Indian mines to European merchants, courts, and workshops This richly illustrated history of diamonds illuminates myriad facets of the "king of gems," including a cast of larger-than-life characters such as Alexander the Great, the Mughal emperor Jahangir, and East India Company adventurers. It's an in-depth study tracing the story of diamonds from their early mining and trade more than two thousand years ago to the 1700s, when Brazil displaced India as the world's primary diamond supplier. Jack Ogden, a historian and gemologist specializing in ancient gems and jewelry, describes the early history of diamond jewelry, the development of diamond cutting, and how diamonds were assessed and valued. The book includes more than one hundred captivating images, from close-up full-color photographs of historic diamond-set jewelry (some previously unpublished), to photomicrographs of individual gems and illustrations of medieval manuscripts, as well as diagrams depicting historical methods of cutting and polishing diamonds.