The variety of life : a survey and a celebration of all the creatures that have ever lived / Colin Tudge.
"The Variety of Life achieves in one volume what most people would think impossible. It introduces all the principal groups of creatures that are now believed to have existed in the history of the Earth. It reveals their astonishing range of form and lifestyle, showing in passing that animals a...
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| Format: | Book |
| Language: | English |
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London ; New York :
Oxford University Press,
2000.
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| Online Access: | Contributor biographical information |
Table of Contents:
- Acknowledgements
- Illustration credits
- Pt. I. The Craft and Science of Classification
- Ch. 1. 'So many goodly creatures'
- Ch. 2. Classification and the search for order
- Ch. 3. The natural order: Darwin's dream and Hennig's solution
- Ch. 4. Data
- Ch. 5. Clades, grades, and the naming of parts: a plea for Neolinnaean Impressionism
- Pt. II. A Survey of all Living Creatures
- How to use this book
- 1. From two kingdoms to three domains
- 2. The domains of the prokaryotes
- 3. The realm of the nucleus
- 4. Mushrooms, moulds, and lichens; rusts, smut, and rot
- 5. The animals
- 6. Anemones, corals, jellyfish, and sea pens
- 7. Clams and cockles, snails and slugs, octopuses and squids
- 8. Animals with jointed legs
- 9. Lobsters, crabs, shrimps, barnacles, and many more besides
- 10. The insects
- 11. Spiders, scorpions, mites, curypterids, horseshoe crabs, and sea spiders
- 12. Starfish and brittle stars, sea urchins and sand dollars, sea lilies, sea daisies, and sea cucumbers
- 13. Sea squirts, lancelets, and vertebrates
- 14. Sharks, rays, and chimaeras
- 15. The ray-finned fish
- 16. Lobefins and tetrapods
- 17. The reptiles
- 18. The mammals
- 19. Lemurs, lorises, tarsiers, monkeys, and apes
- 20. Human beings and our immediate relatives
- 21. The birds
- 22. The modern birds
- 23. The plants
- 24. The flowering plants
- 25. Daisies, artichokes, thistles, and lettuce
- Pt. III. Epilogue: Saving what is left
- Sources and further reading
- Geological timescale
- General index
- Index of organisms.