In our section on Dinosaurs and the pre-historic world, Beth Shapiro talks about her best books on de-extinction, or rather extinction, since, as she points out, bringing extinct species back to life is impossible outside of Hollywood.
Tim White, the paleoanthropologist talks about Darwin, the ancestry and origins of man in his best books on prehistory. Paul Barrett names his best books on dinosaurs and discusses the rich diversity and longevity of the species that come under that name. The palaeontologist Richard Fortey, discussing his selection of the best books on palaeontology, goes even further back in time and talks about the importance of trilobite fossils in understanding pre-historic geography and of algae and bacteria in creating the conditions on earth that allowed the evolution of oxygen-hungry life forms, like dinosaurs and humans.
The best books on Extinction and De-Extinction, recommended by Beth Shapiro
Evolutionary biologist Beth Shapiro tells us why it’s impossible to clone a mammoth, and why we might want to. She guides us through five inspiring books to get us thinking about extinction and the role genetics could potentially play in maintaining biodiversity.
The best books on Prehistory, recommended by Tim White
Paleoanthropologist Tim White tells us about his work investigating the origins of homo sapiens and explains what a 4.4 million-year-old skeleton he found in Africa tells us about our common past.
The best books on Dinosaurs, recommended by Paul Barrett
Palaeontologist and dinosaur specialist Paul Barrett says many of the 1,200 known species of dinosaur were far more complex than we once thought. Some were brightly feathered, many were at least partly warm-blooded
The best books on Palaeontology, recommended by Richard Fortey
Palaeontologist Richard Fortey says it took tiny organisms two billion years of work to oxygenate the planet sufficiently for our kind of life, including trilobites, dinosaurs and ourselves, to evolve
