A Boring History of Life -- Small but Diminishing -- Rock, Thy Name Is Mud -- Your Beach Is Made of Parrotfish Poop -- Jewelry-Amenable Holes of Death -- Super Colossal Shell-Crushing Fury! -- Woodworking at Home -- Driftwood and Woodgrounds -- Bone Eaters of the Deep -- More Bones to Pick -- The Biggest and Most Boring of Animals
Summary:
"As the co-discoverer of the first known burrowing dinosaur and a popular science author, Anthony J. Martin is an expert at explaining his fossil-finding work to broad audiences. In this engaging book, Martin uses modern and fossil traces to introduce readers to a menagerie of animals and other lifeforms that dig, crunch, bore, and otherwise reshape our planet. We meet elephants that dig ballroom-sized caves alongside volcanoes, parrotfishes that chew coral reefs and poop out sandy beaches, dinosaur-eating crocodiles, and moon snails that drill into clams, or even other moon snails. In a detective story that spans millions of years, ranging from microbes to whales, Martin shows how when life got hard, life got boring, using bodies and behavior to hide, eat, attack, and defend, affecting both our world and our understanding of evolution, climate, and life itself"-- Provided by publisher.
This resource is supported by the Institute of Museum and Library Services under the provisions of the Library Services and Technology Act as administered by State Library of Iowa.