Remarkable Creatures: Epic Adventures in the Search for the Origins of Species

One hundred fifty years ago, most of the world was an unexplored wilderness. Our sense of its age and origins was vastly off the mark, and our own species’ history was a set of myths and fairy tales. How did we learn so much so fast?

 In the tradition of The Microbe Hunters and Gods, Graves, and Scholars, Sean Carroll’s Remarkable Creatures celebrates the pioneers who replaced our fanciful notions with the amazing true story of how our world evolved. Carroll recounts the most important discoveries in two centuries of natural history—from Darwin’s trip around the world to Charles Walcott’s discovery of Precambrian life in the Grand Canyon; from Louis and Mary Leakey’s investigations of humanity’s deepest past in East Africa to the trailblazers in modern laboratories who have located a time clock in our DNA. Join Carroll in a rousing voyage of discovery, from the journeys of pioneering naturalists to the breakthroughs making headlines today.