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Horseshoe Crabs and Velvet Worms
Horseshoe Crabs and Velvet Worms: The Story of the Animals and Plants That Time Has Left Behind | Richard Fortey
3 posts | 2 read | 7 to read
From one of the world’s leading natural scientists and the acclaimed author of Trilobite!, Life: A Natural History of Four Billion Years of Life on Earth and Dry Storeroom No. 1 comes a fascinating chronicle of life’s history told not through the fossil record but through the stories of organisms that have survived, almost unchanged, throughout time. Evolution, it seems, has not completely obliterated its tracks as more advanced organisms have evolved; the history of life on earth is far older—and odder—than many of us realize. Scattered across the globe, these remarkable plants and animals continue to mark seminal events in geological time. From a moonlit beach in Delaware, where the hardy horseshoe crab shuffles its way to a frenzy of mass mating just as it did 450 million years ago, to the dense rainforests of New Zealand, where the elusive, unprepossessing velvet worm has burrowed deep into rotting timber since before the breakup of the ancient supercontinent, to a stretch of Australian coastline with stromatolite formations that bear witness to the Precambrian dawn, the existence of these survivors offers us a tantalizing glimpse of pivotal points in evolutionary history. These are not “living fossils” but rather a handful of tenacious creatures of days long gone. Written in buoyant, sparkling prose, Horseshoe Crabs and Velvet Worms is a marvelously captivating exploration of the world’s old-timers combining the very best of science writing with an explorer’s sense of adventure and wonder.
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Grrlbrarian
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"I am frequently led to doubt the sapiens part of our species name." Honestly same. ???

Sace Ditto. 7y
34 likes1 comment
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Grrlbrarian
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1. Morton - Pumpkin Capital of the World
2. To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf
3. Horseshoe Crabs and Velvet Worms: The Story of the Animals and Plants That Time Has Left Behind
4. Impossible question, though I did wear out the Little House books, Anne of Green Gables, Black Stallion books, & the Five Dolls series. Oh, & Nancy Drew & Trixie Belden
5. Persuasion with Ciaran Hinds and Amanda Root
6. The Empty Grave
#LetsTalkAboutBooksBaby

Bluebird Love that Persuasion! 7y
readinginthedark All good things! 7y
51 likes2 comments
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upthecatpunx
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Surprise book splurge! 3 of these were under $9 so it wasn't tooooo bad. Been wanting the Horseshoe crabs once since it came out, so was stoked to find it on the cheap!

1 like1 comment