When Life Took Root on Land

When Life Took Root on Land PDF Author: Jean F. Blashfield
Publisher: Heinemann-Raintree Library
ISBN: 9781403476593
Category : Juvenile Nonfiction
Languages : en
Pages : 88

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Book Description
Imagine giant trees over 100 feet tall covering the land. And monstrous salamanders, dragonflies as big as crows, and millipedes over 6 feet long. Picture abundant life everywhere, then witnessing the end of almost all living things. This is not a science-fiction story. This is the story of our planet, Earth, over 250 million years ago! Journey into the distant past with this book and witness the earliest events in what would become North America; when life on land multiplied, grew to giant proportions, and then suddenly disappeared in the largest extinction our world has ever known.

When Life Took Root on Land

When Life Took Root on Land PDF Author: Jean F. Blashfield
Publisher: Heinemann-Raintree Library
ISBN: 9781403476593
Category : Juvenile Nonfiction
Languages : en
Pages : 88

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Book Description
Imagine giant trees over 100 feet tall covering the land. And monstrous salamanders, dragonflies as big as crows, and millipedes over 6 feet long. Picture abundant life everywhere, then witnessing the end of almost all living things. This is not a science-fiction story. This is the story of our planet, Earth, over 250 million years ago! Journey into the distant past with this book and witness the earliest events in what would become North America; when life on land multiplied, grew to giant proportions, and then suddenly disappeared in the largest extinction our world has ever known.

When Life Flourished in Ancient Seas

When Life Flourished in Ancient Seas PDF Author: Jean F. Blashfield
Publisher: Heinemann-Raintree Library
ISBN: 9781403476586
Category : Juvenile Nonfiction
Languages : en
Pages : 88

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Book Description
This series tells the incredible story of our planet, the formation of our continent, and the events and transformations that have brought the diversity of life that we enjoy today. Learn about the creatures that roamed the Earth millions of years ago. These titles, filled with vivid artwork, show readers which types of animals lived in prehistoric times and where.

As Long As Trees Take Root in the Earth

As Long As Trees Take Root in the Earth PDF Author: Alain Mabanckou
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780857428776
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 124

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Book Description
A hopeful, music-infused poetry collection from Congolese poet Alain Mabanckou. These compelling poems by novelist and essayist Alain Mabanckou conjure nostalgia for an African childhood where the fauna, flora, sounds, and smells evoke snapshots of a life forever gone. Mabanckou's poetry is frank and forthright, urging his compatriots to no longer be held hostage by the civil wars and political upheavals that have ravaged their country and to embrace a new era of self-determination where the village roosters can sing again. These music-infused texts, beautifully translated by Nancy Naomi Carlson and supported by a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, appear together in English for the first time. In these pages, Mabanckou pays tribute to his beloved mother, as well as to the regenerative power of nature, and especially of trees, whose roots are a metaphor for the poet's roots, anchored in the red earth of his birthplace. Mabanckou's yearning for the land of his ancestors is even more poignant because he has been declared persona non grata in his homeland, now called Congo-Brazzaville, due to his biting criticism of the country's regime. Despite these barriers, his poetry exudes hope that nature's resilience will lead humankind on the path to redemption and reconciliation.

She Has Her Mother's Laugh

She Has Her Mother's Laugh PDF Author: Carl Zimmer
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 1101984600
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 727

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Book Description
2019 PEN/E.O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award Finalist "Science book of the year"—The Guardian One of New York Times 100 Notable Books for 2018 One of Publishers Weekly's Top Ten Books of 2018 One of Kirkus's Best Books of 2018 One of Mental Floss's Best Books of 2018 One of Science Friday's Best Science Books of 2018 “Extraordinary”—New York Times Book Review "Magisterial"—The Atlantic "Engrossing"—Wired "Leading contender as the most outstanding nonfiction work of the year"—Minneapolis Star-Tribune Celebrated New York Times columnist and science writer Carl Zimmer presents a profoundly original perspective on what we pass along from generation to generation. Charles Darwin played a crucial part in turning heredity into a scientific question, and yet he failed spectacularly to answer it. The birth of genetics in the early 1900s seemed to do precisely that. Gradually, people translated their old notions about heredity into a language of genes. As the technology for studying genes became cheaper, millions of people ordered genetic tests to link themselves to missing parents, to distant ancestors, to ethnic identities... But, Zimmer writes, “Each of us carries an amalgam of fragments of DNA, stitched together from some of our many ancestors. Each piece has its own ancestry, traveling a different path back through human history. A particular fragment may sometimes be cause for worry, but most of our DNA influences who we are—our appearance, our height, our penchants—in inconceivably subtle ways.” Heredity isn’t just about genes that pass from parent to child. Heredity continues within our own bodies, as a single cell gives rise to trillions of cells that make up our bodies. We say we inherit genes from our ancestors—using a word that once referred to kingdoms and estates—but we inherit other things that matter as much or more to our lives, from microbes to technologies we use to make life more comfortable. We need a new definition of what heredity is and, through Carl Zimmer’s lucid exposition and storytelling, this resounding tour de force delivers it. Weaving historical and current scientific research, his own experience with his two daughters, and the kind of original reporting expected of one of the world’s best science journalists, Zimmer ultimately unpacks urgent bioethical quandaries arising from new biomedical technologies, but also long-standing presumptions about who we really are and what we can pass on to future generations.

When Ice Threatened Living Things

When Ice Threatened Living Things PDF Author: Jean F. Blashfield
Publisher: Heinemann-Raintree Library
ISBN: 9781403476623
Category : Juvenile Nonfiction
Languages : en
Pages : 88

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Book Description
Imagine vast, flowing, 10,000-foot-thick ice sheets covering much of the land. See huge, elephant-like wooly mammoths roaming the tundra. Picture hunting monstrously large mammals alongside the first humans to travel to a new land. This is not an imaginary world. This is our continent, North America, less than 100,000 years ago! Journey into the distant past with this book and witness the earliest events in North America; when much of the continent was still covered in ice, the last of the giant beasts roamed the land, and human beings expanded into new territories to bring the dawn of their (and our) new world.

Investigating the History of Earth

Investigating the History of Earth PDF Author: Michael Anderson
Publisher: The Rosen Publishing Group, Inc
ISBN: 1615304983
Category : Juvenile Nonfiction
Languages : en
Pages : 89

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Book Description
Describes the geological history of the Earth, including how the planet was formed, the beginnings of life, the rise of the dinosaurs in the Mesozoic Age, and the possible future of the Earth.

When Giant Mammals Thundered

When Giant Mammals Thundered PDF Author: Jean F. Blashfield
Publisher: Heinemann-Raintree Library
ISBN: 9781403476616
Category : Juvenile Nonfiction
Languages : en
Pages : 88

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Book Description
Imagine the blooming of the very first flower. Or a 3-ton sloth with massive claws standing as tall as a giraffe. And horses the size of small dogs that have toes instead of hooves. This is not a dream or vision of an artist or author. This is North America over 20 million years ago! Journey into the distant past with this book and witness the earliest events in North America; when mammals rose from the shadows of the extinct dinosaurs to fill the land, and the first flowers and grasslands bloomed.

The Hidden Life of Trees

The Hidden Life of Trees PDF Author: Peter Wohlleben
Publisher: Penguin UK
ISBN: 9386057875
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 213

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Book Description
In The Hidden Life of Trees, Peter Wohlleben shares his deep love of woods and forests and explains the amazing processes of life, death, and regeneration he has observed in the woodland and the amazing scientific mechanisms behind these wonders, of which we are blissfully unaware. Much like human families, tree parents live together with their children, communicate with them, and support them as they grow, sharing nutrients with those who are sick or struggling and creating an ecosystem that mitigates the impact of extremes of heat and cold for the whole group. As a result of such interactions, trees in a family or community are protected and can live to be very old. In contrast, solitary trees, like street kids, have a tough time of it and in most cases die much earlier than those in a group. Drawing on groundbreaking new discoveries, Wohlleben presents the science behind the secret and previously unknown life of trees and their communication abilities; he describes how these discoveries have informed his own practices in the forest around him. As he says, a happy forest is a healthy forest, and he believes that eco-friendly practices not only are economically sustainable but also benefit the health of our planet and the mental and physical health of all who live on Earth.

Planet of the Bugs

Planet of the Bugs PDF Author: Scott Richard Shaw
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022616361X
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 263

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Book Description
Chronicles the evolution of insects and explains how evolutionary innovations have enabled them to disperse widely, occupy narrow niches, and survive global catastrophes. --Publisher's description.

Plant Evolution

Plant Evolution PDF Author: Karl J. Niklas
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022634228X
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 590

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Book Description
Although plants comprise more than 90% of all visible life, and land plants and algae collectively make up the most morphologically, physiologically, and ecologically diverse group of organisms on earth, books on evolution instead tend to focus on animals. This organismal bias has led to an incomplete and often erroneous understanding of evolutionary theory. Because plants grow and reproduce differently than animals, they have evolved differently, and generally accepted evolutionary views—as, for example, the standard models of speciation—often fail to hold when applied to them. Tapping such wide-ranging topics as genetics, gene regulatory networks, phenotype mapping, and multicellularity, as well as paleobotany, Karl J. Niklas’s Plant Evolution offers fresh insight into these differences. Following up on his landmark book The Evolutionary Biology of Plants—in which he drew on cutting-edge computer simulations that used plants as models to illuminate key evolutionary theories—Niklas incorporates data from more than a decade of new research in the flourishing field of molecular biology, conveying not only why the study of evolution is so important, but also why the study of plants is essential to our understanding of evolutionary processes. Niklas shows us that investigating the intricacies of plant development, the diversification of early vascular land plants, and larger patterns in plant evolution is not just a botanical pursuit: it is vital to our comprehension of the history of all life on this green planet.