Description
Book SynopsisAn awe-inspiring journey through the eons and across the globe in search of visible traces of evolution in the living creatures that have survived from earlier times.In this groundbreaking book, prize-winning science writer Richard Fortey chronicles life's history not through the fossil record, but through the stories of organisms that have survived, almost unchanged, through geological time.Fortey takes us on a journey to ancient worlds: on a moonlit beach in Delaware where the horseshoe crab shuffles its way through a violent romance, we catch a glimpse of life 450 million years ago. Along a stretch of Australian coastline, we bear witness to the sights and sounds that would have greeted a Precambrian dawn. And, in the dense rainforests of New Zealand, where the secretive velvet worm burrows into the rotting timber of the jungle floor, we marvel at a living fossil which has survived unchanged since before the break-up of Gondwana, the ancient supercontinent, over 150 million years ag
Trade Review‘I was thrilled by Survivors…. Reading Richard Fortey is always pure pleasure.’ Bill Bryson
‘Fortey has a unique way with the most humble of lifeforms and an infectious curiosity that can slide into near rapture’ Evening Standard
‘An epic, globe-circling scientific adventure story … intriguing. Entertaining, accessible and intensely stimulating – and highly recommended’ Sunday Times
‘A great story, and no one is better equipped than Fortey to tell it. Excellent natural history’ Guardian
‘Unequivocally my book of the year, a happy mix of global travel, high art and very low life’ Tim Radford, Books of the Year, Guardian
‘An elegant celebration’ TLS
