Horseshoe Crabs and Velvet Worms: The Story of the Animals and Plants That Time Has Left Behind, (Paperback)

from HadriantheBlind

A fascinating and reverent tour of a niche of certain type of organism - those that have changed little from their distant ancestors some hundreds of millions of years ago.This really is a tour, with velvet worms, and gingko trees, and the horseshoe crabs of the Atlantic coast, the three-BILLION ...

from Devil_llama

The author looks at the deep history of living things. He spends most of his time on survivors (he prefers not to call them living fossils, though he does use that term for organisms that were found as fossils first and later discovered alive). He starts with the horseshoe crab of the title, then...

from Sullywriter

The erudite Fortey takes readers on fascinating, entertaining tour of life's history told through the stories of organisms that have survived, almost unchanged, throughout time. It is Fortey's curiosity and irrepressible enthusiasm for his subjects that make this book such a pleasure to read.

from DanielleMD

It took me a long time to finish because it was so sciencey and dense with information, but it was very entertaining and enlightening! The author clearly has an affinity for the lifeforms he describes, and for life as a whole. He has a way of making you feel the same way. Even for beetles and worms.

from nmele

I gave this latest exploration of our planet's past, present and future by Richard Fortey three stars because it felt a bit programmatic, less spontaneous, than other of his books I have read. I am being unfair to Fortey, because like his other books, this one is well-written, almost poetry in so...