First ever comprehensive series on the diversity of animal life and the scientific understanding of how that diversity has come about. Each episode is devoted to one of the basic blueprints of animal life

Using fascinating footage of creatures still alive today, this film dives into the heart of the origins of life, from the appearance of bacteria in the ocean four billion years ago until that incredible moment when the first vertebrate emerged onto dry land

The idea of a missing link between humanity and our animal ancestors predates evolution and popular science and actually has religious roots in the deist concept of the Great Chain of Being. Yet, the metaphor has lodged itself in the contemporary imagination, and new fossil discoveries are often hailed in headlines as revealing the elusive transitional step, the moment when we stopped being "animal" and started being "human." In The Accidental Species,...

"Dynamic young Stanford biologist Nathan Wolfe reveals the surprising origins of the world's most deadly viruses, and how we can overcome catastrophic pandemics. In The Viral Storm, award-winning biologist Nathan Wolfe tells the story of how viruses and human beings have evolved side by side through history; how deadly viruses like HIV, swine flu, and bird flu almost wiped us out in the past; and why modern life has made our species vulnerable to...

This book uses art and science to tell the story of life on earth. The text provides thorough understanding of the latest research and is accompanied by paintings prepared especially for this book. Never before has our planet's evolution been so clearly explained. History is marked by disaster. The book of life explains how mammals, having survived at least one of these disasters -- the impact of a massive comet -- luckily inherited the earth....

"A history of fossil discoveries and an insider's look at how these finds have been interpreted and misinterpreted through time ... Places the researchers and their discoveries within the context of their social and scientific milieus and reveals the many forces that shape our interpretation of fossil findings"--Publisher's description.

Evolution and plate tectonics together explain the patterns of life across the world. We find animals and plants where we do because, over time, the continents have moved, separating and uniting in a long, slow dance; because sea levels have risen, cutting off one bit of land from another; because new and barren volcanic islands have risen up from the sea; and because animals and plants vary greatly in their ability to travel, and separation causes...

After several million years of jostling for ecological space, only one survivor from a host of hominid species remains standing: us. Human beings are extraordinary creatures, and it is the unprecedented human brain that makes them so. In this book the authors present a step-by-step account of the evolution of the brain and nervous system. Tapping the very latest findings in evolutionary biology, neuroscience, and molecular biology, the authors explain...

"A radically immersive exploration of three pivotal moments in the evolution of human consciousness, asking what kinds of creatures humans were, are, and might yet be"-- How did humans come to be who we are? Foster explores three pivotal moments in the evolution of human consciousness in order to understand perhaps the strangest animal of all: the human being. Readers will experience the Upper Paleolithic era as a Cro-Magnon hunter-gatherer, living...