The shifting continents of the Earth are heading for inevitable collision: 250 million years from now, all the land masses on this planet will come together in a single, gigantic supercontinent which no human is ever likely to see. That future supercontinent will not be the first to form on Earth, nor will it be the last. Each cycle lasts half a billion years, making it the grandest of all the patterns in nature. It is scarcely a century since science first understood how Pangaea, the supe...

Not so long ago, our roads, buildings, gravestones and monuments were built from local rock, our cities were powered by coal from Welsh mines, and our lamps were lit with paraffin from Scottish shale. We live among the remnants of those times but for the most part our mines are gone, our buildings are no longer local, and the flow of stone travels east to west.Spurred on by the erasure of history and industry, Ted Nield journeyed across this buried landscape: from the small Welsh vi...

Did an enormous collision in the Asteroid Belt, orbiting the sun between Mars and Jupiter, bombard Earth with meteorites 470 million years ago? Astonishing new research suggests it did, and a revolutionary theory is emerging that this bombardment resulted in the single greatest increase in biological diversity on the planet since the origin of life.Introducing these discoveries to the general public for the first time, Ted Nield challenges the view that meteorites are bad news. Trac...

More than 470 million years ago, a stupendous collision in the Asteroid Belt bombarded the Earth with meteorites of all sizes. New research suggests that the resulting ecological disturbance may have been responsible for the single greatest increase in biological diversity since the origin of complex life. Introducing these fresh discoveries, Ted Nield challenges the orthodox view that meteorite strikes are bad news for life on Earth.Interpreted as omens of doom or objects of power...

50,000 years ago – merely a blip in evolutionary time – our Homo sapiens ancestors were competing for existence with several other human species, just as their own precursors had been doing for millions of years. Yet something about our species separated it from the pack, and led to its survival while the rest became extinct. So just what was it that allowed Homo sapiens to become Masters of the Planet? Curator Emeritus at the American Museum of Natural History, Ian Tatte...

In Prehistory, the award-winning archaeologist and renowned scholar Colin Renfrew covers human existence before the advent of written records–which is to say, the overwhelming majority of our time here on earth. But Renfrew also opens up to discussion, and even debate, the term “prehistory” itself, giving an incisive, concise, and lively survey of the past, and how scholars and scientists labor to bring it to light.Renfrew begins by looking at prehistory as a discipline, particular...

Travel backward through time from today's scattered billions to the handful of early humans who lived in Africa 60,000 years ago and are ancestors to us all. In Deep Ancestry, scientist and National Geographic explorer Spencer Wells shows how tiny genetic changes add up over time into a fascinating story. Using scores of real-life examples, helpful analogies, and detailed diagrams and illustrations, he explains exactly how each and every individual's DNA contributes another piece to the ji...

A Los Angeles Times BestsellerNew York Times best-selling author Brian Fagan explores the world of the Cro-Magnons--the mysterious, little-known race, famous for its cave paintings, that survived the Ice Age and became the ancestors of today's humans.They survived by their wits in a snowbound world, hunting, and sometimes being hunted by, animals many times their size. By flickering firelight, they drew bison, deer, and ma...

Discover hundreds of intriguing, entertaining & often hilarious origins to the English language's most curious phrases in this trivia book from a bestselling author.English is filled with interesting phrases. This book reveals the surprising, captivating and even hilarious origins behind 400 of them, including:• Read between the Lines• Cat Got Your Tongue?• Put a Sock in It• Close, but No Cigar• Bring Home the Bacon• Caught Red-Handed• Under the Wea...

Short stories from the Hugo, Nebula, and World Fantasy Award-winning author. "One of the best science fiction collections I've ever read." — The Magazine of Fantasy and Science FictionThough written in the last decades of the twentieth-century, these tales are timeless and prophetic visions created by Michael Swanwick's wide-ranging imagination. Through stories of talking alien beasts, eco-fiction, and post-apocalyptic survival, this colle...

"Ellen Datlow is the queen of anthology editors in America."—Peter StraubFrom multi-award–winning anthologist Ellen Datlow, The Big Book of Science Fiction and Fantasy features groundbreaking works from some of the most distinctive voices in speculative fiction.Set in far futures, the near past, or alternate realities; infused with elements of horror, mystery, and mysticism; and featuring aliens, ghosts, and people from history, these imaginative a...

How the mystery of the Bible's greatest story shaped geology: a MacArthur Fellow presents a surprising perspective on Noah's Flood.In Tibet, geologist David R. Montgomery heard a local story about a great flood that bore a striking similarity to Noah’s Flood. Intrigued, Montgomery began investigating the world’s flood stories and—drawing from historic works by theologians, natural philosophers, and scientists—discovered the counterintuitive role Noah’s Flood played in the developme...