author results for Shubin, Neil

Ends of the Earth

Shubin, Neil — Fri, 31 Jan 2025 00:00:00 GMT

"For three decades, renowned scientist Neil Shubin has made extraordinary discoveries by leading scientific expeditions to the sweeping ice landscapes of the Arctic and Antarctic. He's survived polar storms and faced the limits of human endurance to explore questions of how life survived and adapted, and what our future on a changing planet may hold. Scientific discoveries at Earth's polar regions have changed the way we see the world and these insights are becoming ever more urgent. These landscapes are the epicenter for rapid change to our planet, with ice retreating, animal species moving toward the equator or going extinct, Indigenous communities confronting dramatic environmental changes, and political battles heating up for newly accessible mineral and gas resources. In the end, what happens at the poles does not stay in the poles--events there in the coming years will affect all life and every nation on the planet. The book blends travel, science, and environmental writing to deepen our understanding of animal and plant life, the history of our ice ages, the age of dinosaurs, the history of Western exploration, and the clues meteorites preserved at the poles contain about the cosmos. Written with infectious enthusiasm and irresistible curiosity, Shubin shares lively adventure stories from the field to reveal just how far scientists will go to understand polar regions and to reveal the poles' impact on the rest of life on the planet."-- Provided by publisher.

Some Assembly Required

Shubin, Neil — Fri, 31 Jan 2020 00:00:00 GMT

"The author of the best-selling Your Inner Fish, now gives us a lively and accessible account of the great transformations in the history of life, that enable us to further understand whether our presence on this planet is an accident or inevitable. The great transformations in the history of life brought about whole scale shifts in how animals live and how their bodies are organized: the evolution of fish to land-living creature, the origin of birds, the beginnings of bodies in single-celled creatures. Shubin describes how over the last half-century, scientists have been able to explore how genetic recipes build bodies during embryological development--how these inventions and adaptations occur in a nonprogressive manner in different contexts, at different speeds. Paleontology has been transformed over the last 50 years by tools and techniques of molecular biology--and it is that revolution in our understanding of the evolution of life that Shubin traces here. Each of us is a mosaic of precursors that came about at different times and places, with deep rooted connections across species that Darwin, for all he understood, could never even have imagined"--Provided by publisher.

Ends of the Earth

Shubin, Neil — Fri, 31 Jan 2025 00:00:00 GMT

**Shortlisted for the 2025 Royal Society Trivedi Science Book Prize**
The bestselling author of Your Inner Fish takes readers on an epic adventure to the North and South Poles to reveal the secrets locked in the ice about life, the cosmos, and our planet’s future.
“Urgent [and] prescient…The book captures Shubin’s reverence for both the beauty and the mysteries hidden in the cold, barren tundra.”—The New Yorker
Renowned scientist Neil Shubin has made extraordinary discoveries by leading scientific expeditions to the sweeping ice landscapes of the Arctic and Antarctic. He’s survived polar storms, traveled in temperatures that can freeze flesh in seconds, and worked hundreds of miles from the nearest humans, all to deepen our understanding of our world.
Written with infectious enthusiasm and irresistible curiosity, Ends of the Earth blends travel writing, science, and history in a book brimming with surprising and wonderful discoveries. Shubin retraces his steps on a “dinosaur dance floor,” showing us where these beasts had populated the once tropical lands at the poles. He takes readers meteor hunting, as meteorites preserved in the ice can be older than our planet and can tell us about our galaxy’s formation. Readers also encounter insects and fish that develop their own anti-freeze, and aquatic life in ancient lakes hidden miles under the ice that haven’t seen the surface in centuries. It turns out that explorers and scientists have found these extreme environments as prime ground for making scientific breakthroughs across a vast range of knowledge.
Shubin shares unforgettable moments from centuries of expeditions to reveal just how far scientists will go to understand polar regions. In the end, what happens at the poles does not stay in the poles—the ends of the earth offer profound stories that will forever change our view of life and the entire planet.

Ends of the Earth

Shubin, Neil — Fri, 31 Jan 2025 00:00:00 GMT

The Universe Within

Shubin, Neil — Thu, 31 Jan 2013 00:00:00 GMT

**Kirkus Best Books of the Year (2013)**

From one of our finest and most popular science writers, and the best-selling author of Your Inner Fish, comes the answer to a scientific mystery as big as the world itself: How are the events that formed our solar system billions of years ago embedded inside each of us?

In Your Inner Fish, Neil Shubin delved into the amazing connections between human bodies—our hands, heads, and jaws—and the structures in fish and worms that lived hundreds of millions of years ago. In The Universe Within, with his trademark clarity and exuberance, Shubin takes an even more expansive approach to the question of why we look the way we do. Starting once again with fossils, he turns his gaze skyward, showing us how the entirety of the universe’s fourteen-billion-year history can be seen in our bodies. As he moves from our very molecular composition (a result of stellar events at the origin of our solar system) through the workings of our eyes, Shubin makes clear how the evolution of the cosmos has profoundly marked our own bodies.
WITH BLACK-AND-WHITE LINE DRAWINGS THROUGHOUT