This generously illustrated book tells the story of the human family, showing how our species' physical traits and behaviors evolved over millions of years as our ancestors adapted to dramatic environmental changes.

"For most of us, the story of mammal evolution starts after the asteroid impact that killed the dinosaurs, but over the last 20 years scientists have uncovered new fossils and used new technologies that have upended this story. In Beasts Before Us, palaeontologist Elsa Panciroli charts the emergence of the mammal lineage, Synapsida, beginning at their murky split from the reptiles in the Carboniferous period, over three-hundred million years ago....

"In a near-future world ravaged by climate change, who will win in the struggle between humanity and nature? A thick fog rolls in over Shivering Heights. The river overflows, the sky is streaked with toxic green, parasites proliferate in torrential rains and once safely classified species - humans included - are evolving and behaving in unprecedented ways. Against this poetically hostile backdrop, a biologist, Laura, fights to understand the nature...

In the wake of global cataclysm, scientists race through the ruins of the Atlantean ship left on Earth, across Atlantean science stations in space, and into the past of a culture whose secrets could save humanity.

Why aren't we more like other apes? How did we win the evolutionary race? Find out how "wise" Homo sapiens really are.

Prehistory has never been more exciting: New discoveries are overturning long-held theories left and right. Stone tools in Australia date back 65,000 years—a time when, we once thought, the first Sapiens had barely left Africa. DNA sequencing has unearthed a new hominid group—the Denisovans—and...

Darwin's revolution in thought using evolutionary biology, history of science, and social history as his canvas, Gould paints the fascinating picture of how human biases (philosophical, cultural, and spiritual) have continued to resist Darwin's theory, inverting it into its own philosophical opposite. "If there's one thing we desperately want evolution to be, it's a principle that predicts progress ... but it just isn't so."-- Stephen Jay Gould. For...

Have you ever wondered why the human body looks the way it does? Why we walk on two legs instead of four? Why we can see in color but have a lousy sense of smell? Your Inner Fish delves deep into the past to answer questions like these. The three-part series reveals a startling truth: Hidden within the human body is a story of life on Earth. Based on a best-selling book by evolutionary biologist Neil Shubin, this scientific adventure story takes viewers...

"Purported to be part jackrabbit and part antelope, the jackalope began as a local joke concocted by two young brothers in a small Wyoming town during the Great Depression. Their creation quickly spread around the U.S., where it now regularly appears as innumerable forms of kitsch ... Although the jackalope is an invention of the imagination, it is nevertheless connected to actual horned rabbits, which exist in nature and have for centuries been collected...