EBOOK
About
Hunting for fossils with a preeminent guide and teacher
Michael Novacek, a world-renowned paleontologist who has discovered important fossils on virtually every continent, is an authority on patterns of evolution and on the relationships among extinct and extant organisms. Time Traveler is his captivating account of how his boyhood enthusiasm for dinosaurs became a lifelong commitment to vanguard science. He takes us with him as he discovers fossils in his own backyard in Los Angeles, and then goes looking for them in the high Andes, the black volcanic mountains of Yemen, and the incredibly rich fossil badlands of the Gobi desert.
Wherever Novacek goes, he searches for still undiscovered evidence of what life was like on Earth millions of years ago. Along the way, he has almost drowned, been stung by deadly scorpions, been held at gunpoint by a renegade army, and nearly choked in raging dust storms. Fieldwork is very demanding in a host of unusual, dramatic, sometimes hilarious ways, and Novacek writes of its alluring perils with affection and discernment. But, Time Traveler also makes sense of many complex themes, about dinosaur evolution, continental drift, mass extinctions, new methods for understanding ancient environments, and the evolutionary secrets of DNA in fossil organisms. It is also an enthralling adventure story.
Michael Novacek, a world-renowned paleontologist who has discovered important fossils on virtually every continent, is an authority on patterns of evolution and on the relationships among extinct and extant organisms. Time Traveler is his captivating account of how his boyhood enthusiasm for dinosaurs became a lifelong commitment to vanguard science. He takes us with him as he discovers fossils in his own backyard in Los Angeles, and then goes looking for them in the high Andes, the black volcanic mountains of Yemen, and the incredibly rich fossil badlands of the Gobi desert.
Wherever Novacek goes, he searches for still undiscovered evidence of what life was like on Earth millions of years ago. Along the way, he has almost drowned, been stung by deadly scorpions, been held at gunpoint by a renegade army, and nearly choked in raging dust storms. Fieldwork is very demanding in a host of unusual, dramatic, sometimes hilarious ways, and Novacek writes of its alluring perils with affection and discernment. But, Time Traveler also makes sense of many complex themes, about dinosaur evolution, continental drift, mass extinctions, new methods for understanding ancient environments, and the evolutionary secrets of DNA in fossil organisms. It is also an enthralling adventure story.
Related Subjects
Reviews
"This memoir is a superb introduction to paleontology as it really is and how it is done, from fish to dinosaur, bird, and mammal. Novacek, world leader in the discipline, has brilliantly woven its substance into accounts of his own field adventures across three continents and 400 million years. Read it, and give it to a teenager you'd like to see go into science."
Edward O. Wilson, University Research Professor, Harvard University
"Time Traveler is first-rate. The vibrant field of paleontology has been reinvigorated in recent years by the energy of Mike Novacek and his colleagues, and his beautifully written account of their work makes for fascinating reading."
Peter H. Raven, director of the Missouri Botanical Garden