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Books > Earth & environment > Earth sciences > Palaeontology

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Life: an Unauthorized Biography (Paperback, New Ed) Loot Price: R298
Discovery Miles 2 980
You Save: R44 (13%)

Life: an Unauthorized Biography (Paperback, New Ed)

Richard Fortey

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List price R342 Loot Price R298 Discovery Miles 2 980 You Save R44 (13%)

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The best book about the 4-billion-year history of life on Earth. Fortey works at the Natural History Museum in London and has been a palaeontologist for 30 years. A great deal in earth sciences involves fieldwork; the painstaking and exhilarating documentation of the natural world that inspires many a young scientist. It has given the author of this remarkable book a clear and different perspective in his history of the natural world. This is no dry recital of the facts of the past 4000 million years, but a lively and highly personal account involving literature, gardening and even the author's cat, Felix. Fortey includes aspects of his experience as well as images and ideas from all walks of life to produce a book that reads like a slightly racy biography. For a combination of fascinating science, travelogue, entertaining character sketches and sometimes laugh-out-loud personal anecdotes, there is nothing to match it. And you thought palaeontology was dull! This is a book about the excitement and passion of discovery, and the fact that the discoveries are in science is almost incidental to the pursuit - precisely the same drives motivate great artists, as well as great scientists, and Fortey goes a long way towards dispelling the myth of the cold- blooded scientist. (Kirkus UK)
A magisterial exploration of the natural history of the first four thousand million years of life on and in the earth, by one of Britain's most dazzling science writers. What do any of us know about the history of our planet before the arrival of man? Most of us have a dim impression of a swirling mass of dust solidifying to form a volcanic globe, briefly populated by dinosaurs, then by woolly mammoths and finally by our own hairy ancestors. This book, aimed at the curious and intelligent but perhaps mildly uninformed reader, brilliantly dispels such lingering notions forever. At the end of the book we understand the complexity of the history of life on earth, and the complexity of how it has come to be understood, as, perhaps, from no other single volume. The result is enthralling.

General

Imprint: Flamingo
Country of origin: United Kingdom
Release date: April 1998
Authors: Richard Fortey
Dimensions: 196 x 129 x 23mm (L x W x T)
Format: Paperback - B-format
Pages: 399
Edition: New Ed
ISBN-13: 978-0-00-638420-5
Categories: Books > Science & Mathematics > Science: general issues > General
Books > Science & Mathematics > Biology, life sciences > Life sciences: general issues > Evolution
Books > Earth & environment > Earth sciences > Palaeontology > General
LSN: 0-00-638420-X
Barcode: 9780006384205

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