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"The Tangled Bank is the first textbook about evolution intended for the general reader. Zimmer, an award-winning science writer, takes readers on a fascinating journey into the latest discoveries about evolution. In the Canadian Arctic, paleontologists unearth fossils documenting the move of our ancestors from sea to land. In the outback of Australia, a zoologist tracks some of the world's deadliest snakes to decipher the 100-million-year evolution of venom molecules. In Africa, geneticists are gathering DNA to probe the origin of our species. In clear, non-technical language, Zimmer explains the central concepts essential for understanding new advances in evolution, including natural selection, genetic drift, and sexual selection. He demonstrates how vital evolution is to all branches of modern biology-from the fight against deadly antibiotic-resistant bacteria to the analysis of the human genome. Richly illustrated with 285 illustrations and photographs, The Tangled Bank is essential reading for anyone who wants to understand the history of life on Earth."-- Publisher's description.… (más)
This work endeavors to put evolution into terms that can be understood by people who don't know anything about evolution. It succeeds. I could use this in my college freshman biology class and students would be able to comprehend. It shows the ways that evolution works without going into so many technical details you have to be a biologist to understand. At the same time, it is not so simplistic that this biologist felt like I was being talked down to; I was able to read and enjoy it, even without the introduction of a lot of new information (for me) and sciency talk. Recommended. ( )
Información procedente del conocimiento común inglés.Edita para encontrar en tu idioma.
It is interesting to contemplate an entangled bank, clothed with many plants of many kinds, with birds singing on the bushes, with various insects flitting about, and with worms crawling through the damp earth, and to reflect that these elaborately constructed forms, so different from each other, and dependent on each other in so complex a manner, have all been provided by laws acting around us. These laws, taken in the largest sense, being Growth with Reproduction; inheritance with is almost implied by reproduction; Variability from the indirect and direct action of the external conditions of life, and from use and disuse; a Ratio of Increase so high as to lead to a Struggle for Life, and as a consequence to Natural Selection, entailing Divergence of Character and the Extinction of less-improved forms. Thus, from the war of nature, from famine and death, the most exalted object which we are capable of conceiving, namely, the production of the higher animals, directly follows. There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed laws of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.
--Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species (1859)
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Información procedente del conocimiento común inglés.Edita para encontrar en tu idioma.
(Preface, 2nd Edition) Few sounds are as joyful for authors as the thud made by a mail carrier dropping the first printed copy of their book by the front door.
(Chapter 1, 2nd Edition) One of the best feelings paleontologists can ever have is to realize that they've just found a fossil that will fill an empty space in our understanding of the history of life.
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Información procedente del conocimiento común inglés.Edita para encontrar en tu idioma.
Evolutionary biology offers medical researchers a map of life.
"The Tangled Bank is the first textbook about evolution intended for the general reader. Zimmer, an award-winning science writer, takes readers on a fascinating journey into the latest discoveries about evolution. In the Canadian Arctic, paleontologists unearth fossils documenting the move of our ancestors from sea to land. In the outback of Australia, a zoologist tracks some of the world's deadliest snakes to decipher the 100-million-year evolution of venom molecules. In Africa, geneticists are gathering DNA to probe the origin of our species. In clear, non-technical language, Zimmer explains the central concepts essential for understanding new advances in evolution, including natural selection, genetic drift, and sexual selection. He demonstrates how vital evolution is to all branches of modern biology-from the fight against deadly antibiotic-resistant bacteria to the analysis of the human genome. Richly illustrated with 285 illustrations and photographs, The Tangled Bank is essential reading for anyone who wants to understand the history of life on Earth."-- Publisher's description.
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