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Cargando... Time Traveler: In Search of Dinosaurs and Other Fossils from Montana to Mongoliapor Michael Novacek
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Inscríbete en LibraryThing para averiguar si este libro te gustará. Actualmente no hay Conversaciones sobre este libro. Michael Novacek begins his book Time Traveler like a memoir, taking us back to a time when high school yearbooks crowned well endowed coeds with titles such as "Miss Sweater Girl" (and it wasn't considered sexist). Novacek makes it autobiographically personal by including interesting artifacts (pun totally intended) about his own adolescence, like how he was in a rock band that could have gone somewhere, or that he kissed a girl named Diane in the back of a bus. He even includes some humor. Consider this quote, "...our last moment on earth will probably be marked by an image of a dark cab coming at us dead-on, with a flash of gold teeth and a tequila bottle on the dashboard" (p 166). It makes for a very entertaining read. But, that's not to say he dumbs down paleontology and all things natural history. Just the opposite, in fact, his laid back writing style made the otherwise dry topic (for me anyways) far more interesting. Just wait until you get to the part about whales found in Patagonia and Michael's harrowing adventures in Chile. ( ) After a slow (for me at least) few chapters, this book was absolutely delightful. It is essentially a memoir told in field expeditions and mixes great stories of trips around the world in search of fossils with brief explanations of the dating and significance of the various creatures discovered. Although there are quite a few drawings in the book - most of the fossil finds are illustrated, for some reason the photographs are excessively grainy. I'm not sure if this is a result of bad photos or bad printing, but it's disappointing when decent resolution is easily provided by current technology. Worth owning for anyone, and a relaxing read for the paleontological enthusiast. sin reseñas | añadir una reseña
"Michael Novacek, a world-renowned paleontologist who has discovered important fossils on virtually every continent, is an authority on patterns of evolution and on the relationships between extinct and extant organisms. Part memoir, part adventure story, part natural history, Time Traveler is his account of how his boyhood enthusiasm for dinosaurs became a lifelong commitment to vanguard science. The book traces the progress of his passion for paleontology, from his beginnings as a young dinosaur addict discovering fossils in his own Los Angeles backyard, through his trials as a rookie doing his first fieldwork, to his eventual development into a leader of expeditions to some of the world's most important fossil fields. It is a journey in space as well as time, filled with adventures at the La Brea Tar Pits and the fossil-rich road cuts of Southern California, in the empty Baja peninsula of Mexico, atop the high Andes of Chile and the black volcanic mountains of Yemen, and in the promised land of dinosaur hunters, the incredibly rich fossil badlands of the Gobi Desert." "Wherever Novacek goes he searches for undiscovered evidence of what life was like on Earth millions of years ago. He vividly describes the unique thrill of discovery, of being the first to find a pristine, ancient fossil, and of working to establish just exactly what it represents. He has learned that fieldwork is not just a matter of expertise and adventure, but requires a tolerance, even an appetite, for heat, sandstorms, snakes, bandits, flash floods, bucking horses, boredom, loneliness, and disappointment. And he also knows that great discovery is eerily dependent on luck and, less romantically, on effective management of the bureaucracy and political intrigue accompanying any major expedition. Despite all these hardships, though, his devotion to the science has never wavered." "Time Traveler illuminates some of the most exciting issues in current paleontology - dinosaur and mammal evolution, continental drift, mass extinctions, and new methods for understanding ancient environments and the geologic time scale. By revisiting our planet's past and his own, Novacek teaches us how to understand the prospects for the future not only of paleontology but of our global ecosystem."--BOOK JACKET. No se han encontrado descripciones de biblioteca. |
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Google Books — Cargando... GénerosSistema Decimal Melvil (DDC)560.92Natural sciences and mathematics Fossils & prehistoric life Paleontology Biography And History BiographyClasificación de la Biblioteca del CongresoValoraciónPromedio:
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