“[Carroll is] the rare scientist with an easygoing writing style.” - USA Today
“[Carroll is] the new, user-friendly public face of evolutionary science.”- U.S. News & World Report
Just two centuries ago, most of our world was an unexplored wilderness. Our sense of the history of our planet and the life on it, including our own species, was vague and vastly off the mark. We’ve come a long way in our understanding of our origins, thanks to the awe-inspiring exploits of a group of people who walked where no one else had walked, saw what no one else had seen, and thought what no one else had thought. And in REMARKABLE CREATURES (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, February 12, 2009), top evolutionary biologist and acclaimed author Sean B. Carroll (The Making of the Fittest, Endless Forms Most Beautiful) takes us on those people’s epic journeys—journeys that sparked a revolution that changed, profoundly and forever, our perception of the living world and our place within it.
In the tradition of The Microbe Hunters and Gods, Graves, and Scholars, Carroll brings to vivid life:
· The adventures of three men—Darwin, Wallace, and Bates—who returned from their explorations with the makings of the theory of evolution
· The spectacular expeditions of Eugene Dubois (who found the Java Man, the first claimed missing link between apes and humans), Charles Walcott (who discovered pre-Cambrian life in the Grand Canyon), and Roy Chapman Andrews (whose exploration of Mongolia’s Gobi desert uncovered dinosaur eggs)
· The five decades Louis and Mary Leakey spent searching for our deepest past in East Africa
· The endeavors of modern-day trailblazers who have discovered a time clock in our DNA—and extracted ancient DNA from extinct species
Weaving the stories of these and other pioneering naturalists into an accessible and compelling narrative, Carroll delivers an unforgettable and inspiring account of two centuries of dramatic discoveries that revealed the history of our world, and transformed our sense of both our selves and our planet.
Sean Carroll is Professor of Molecular Biology and Genetics and an Investigator with the Howard Hughes Medical Institute at the University of Wisconsin, and a member of the National Academy of Sciences. He is also the author of The Making of the Fittest and Endless Forms Most Beautiful, a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and a best science book of the year in Discover and USA Today. Carroll is the consulting scientific producer on a two-hour NOVA special based on these books that will air in 2009, and he will deliver the keynote speech at the American Academy of Sciences’ conference celebrating the Darwin Bicentennial.
REMARKABLE CREATURES: Epic Adventures in the Search for the Origins of Species
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
February 12, 2009
ISBN: 978-0-15-101485-9
$26.00
CONTACT: Patrice Taddonio, Publicist
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
