10 Best Paleontology Books

Spark your little girl’s interest in science with Science! STEM Sticker Adventure by Hopscotch Girls. The world of science is an exciting place for little girls who dream big. This fun sticker book is packed with activities that will empower your daughters, granddaughters and the special little girls in your life to ask questions, seek answers and explore the natural world. Hopscotch Girls has worked with leading scientists to create a sticker book that’s as fun as it is educational. While your little girl plays with over 150 stickers, she’ll join Aliyah, Emma and Avery as they learn about 7 scientific disciplines over 24 full color pages. The book also includes a page of bonus stickers that can be used as reward stickers or on reward charts. * Chemistry: Get into the lab and conduct experiments with colorful test tubes, bunsen burners, beakers and more. * Geology: Study rocks, minerals and landforms in a spectacular landscape. * Astronomy: Put on your astronaut suit and reach for the stars (and planets!) with this fun space scene and space stickers. * Marine Biology: Explore the ocean depths and meet fish, coral and other marine life in your scuba gear. * Botany: Grow your knowledge of the natural world with stickers like plants, flowers, and tools for preserving plant specimens. * Paleontology: Get digging and learn about paleontology with dinosaur bone, fossil and dig tool stickers. * Physiology & Medicine: Be a doctor and help a patient in need with stickers like band aids, a cast, medicine, etc. Science! STEM Sticker Adventure introduces girls to science and opens the door to future careers in the field. The book also contains ideas for activities to help your kids learn even more about science. Build and nurture their excitement and who knows where it might lead one day? If you’re looking for a perfect rainy day activity, or a way to keep curious and clever girls age 4 to 8 occupied on a long car trip or plane ride, Science! STEM Sticker Adventure is the ideal sticker book for you. Pick up a copy today. Different from Other Activity Books & STEM Toys This book is different from other sticker books for girls because it introduces girls to STEM skills in a way that other kids sticker books do not. Science! STEM Sticker Adventure uses dynamic scenes to introduce seven scientific disciplines, and includes ideas for easy science projects for kids at the end. Many other kids activity books, especially stickers for girls, focus on superficial things like dressing girl characters. In contrast, girls can use these science and girl stickers to come up with their own science games and adventures. Also, unlike other STEM toys for girls and science experiments for kids, this book is virtually mess-free. How to Use This Sticker Book to Raise Confident Girls If your child is in preschool: Sticker books with small stickers are fun for teaching your preschooler how to identify colors, numbers, and objects. Your little girl can practice her motor and cognitive skills as she peels the two of you cute stickers and matches them with the corresponding scene. You can start teaching her the basics about different scientific disciplines, and the different environments in the world around us. If your child is of school age: Your child can now play with stickers on her own and not just in this activity book. She may want to use some in her scrapbook or notebook as well! She will also love bonding with you as you explore storytelling together and create an adventure of your very own.

“Brilliant. … A work of staggering depth. … Pattison deftly weaves strands of science, sociology and political science into a compelling tale that stretches over decades.” — Minneapolis Star Tribune A decade in the making, Fossil Men is a scientific detective story played out in anatomy and the natural history of the human body: the first full- length account of the discovery of a startlingly unpredicted human ancestor more than a million years older than Lucy It is the ultimate mystery: where do we come from? In 1994, a team led by fossil-hunting legend Tim White uncovered a set of ancient bones in Ethiopia’s Afar region. Radiometric dating of nearby rocks indicated the resulting skeleton, classified as Ardipithecus ramidus –nicknamed “Ardi”–was an astounding 4.4 million years old, more than a million years older than the world-famous “Lucy.” The team spent the next 15 years studying the bones in strict secrecy, all while continuing to rack up landmark fossil discoveries in the field and becoming increasingly ensnared in bitter disputes with scientific peers and Ethiopian bureaucrats. When finally revealed to the public, Ardi stunned scientists around the world and challenged a half-century of orthodoxy about human evolution–how we started walking upright, how we evolved our nimble hands, and, most significantly, whether we were descended from an ancestor that resembled today’s chimpanzee. But the discovery of Ardi wasn’t just a leap forward in understanding the roots of humanity–it was an attack on scientific convention and the leading authorities of human origins, triggering an epic feud about the oldest family skeleton. In Fossil Men, acclaimed journalist Kermit Pattison brings us a cast of eccentric, obsessive scientists, including White, an uncompromising perfectionist whose virtuoso skills in the field were matched only by his propensity for making enemies; Gen Suwa, a Japanese savant whose deep expertise about teeth rivaled anyone on Earth; Owen Lovejoy, a onetime creationist-turned-paleoanthropologist with radical insights into human locomotion; Berhane Asfaw, who survived imprisonment and torture to become Ethiopia’s most senior paleoanthropologist; Don Johanson, the discoverer of Lucy, who had a rancorous falling out with the Ardi team; and the Leakeys, for decades the most famous family in paleoanthropology. Based on a half-decade of research in Africa, Europe and North America, Fossil Men is not only a brilliant investigation into the origins of the human lineage, but the oldest of human emotions: curiosity, jealousy, perseverance and wonder.

From the origin of life, through the age of dinosaurs stalked by the terrifying Tyrannosaurus rex, to the earliest humans, this book tells the story of life on Earth. Dinosaurs may be the stars of the show, but the book is truly comprehensive, with fossil plants, invertebrates, amphibians, fish, birds, reptiles, mammals, and even early bacteria conjuring up an entire past world. To put all of these extinct species in context, the book explores geological time and the way life forms are classified. It also looks at how fossils preserve the story of evolution and how that story can be deciphered. The “Young Earth” chapter explains how forces shaped Earth and steered the course of life. The main part of the book, “Life on Earth,” lays out and catalogs the rich story of life, from its beginnings 4 billion years ago, through each geological period, such as the Jurassic and Cretaceous, to the present. The stunning visuals and authoritative text make Dinosaurs and Prehistoric Life a fascinating and revealing encyclopedia that will appeal to the whole family.

“THE ULTIMATE DINOSAUR BIOGRAPHY,” hails Scientific American : A thrilling new history of the age of dinosaurs, from one of our finest young scientists. “A masterpiece of science writing.” — Washington Post A New York Times Bestseller • Goodreads Choice Awards Winner • A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: Smithsonian, Science Friday, The Times (London), Popular Mechanics, Science News “This is scientific storytelling at its most visceral, striding with the beasts through their Triassic dawn, Jurassic dominance, and abrupt demise in the Cretaceous.” — Nature The dinosaurs. Sixty-six million years ago, the Earth’s most fearsome creatures vanished. Today they remain one of our planet’s great mysteries. Now The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs reveals their extraordinary, 200-million- year-long story as never before. In this captivating narrative (enlivened with more than seventy original illustrations and photographs), Steve Brusatte, a young American paleontologist who has emerged as one of the foremost stars of the field– naming fifteen new species and leading groundbreaking scientific studies and fieldwork–masterfully tells the complete, surprising, and new history of the dinosaurs, drawing on cutting-edge science to dramatically bring to life their lost world and illuminate their enigmatic origins, spectacular flourishing, astonishing diversity, cataclysmic extinction, and startling living legacy. Captivating and revelatory, The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs is a book for the ages. Brusatte traces the evolution of dinosaurs from their inauspicious start as small shadow dwellers–themselves the beneficiaries of a mass extinction caused by volcanic eruptions at the beginning of the Triassic period–into the dominant array of species every wide-eyed child memorizes today, T. rex , Triceratops , Brontosaurus , and more. This gifted scientist and writer re-creates the dinosaurs’ peak during the Jurassic and Cretaceous, when thousands of species thrived, and winged and feathered dinosaurs, the prehistoric ancestors of modern birds, emerged. The story continues to the end of the Cretaceous period, when a giant asteroid or comet struck the planet and nearly every dinosaur species (but not all) died out, in the most extraordinary extinction event in earth’s history, one full of lessons for today as we confront a “sixth extinction.” Brusatte also recalls compelling stories from his globe-trotting expeditions during one of the most exciting eras in dinosaur research–which he calls “a new golden age of discovery”–and offers thrilling accounts of some of the remarkable findings he and his colleagues have made, including primitive human-sized tyrannosaurs; monstrous carnivores even larger than T. rex ; and paradigm-shifting feathered raptors from China. An electrifying scientific history that unearths the dinosaurs’ epic saga, The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs will be a definitive and treasured account for decades to come. Includes 75 images, world maps of the prehistoric earth, and a dinosaur family tree.

Bigger and Better, Updated and Expanded We live in a golden age of paleontological discovery–on average, we find one new dinosaur species per week. The most fascinating among them take their place in this updated edition of Dinosaurs –The Grand Tour; from Aardonyx , a lumbering beast that formed a link between two- and four-legged dinosaurs, to Zuniceratops , who boasted a deadly pair of horns. Here, you’ll find everything worth knowing about every dinosaur worth knowing–more than 300 in all, including: * Amphibious Halszkaraptor looks like no other dinosaur we’ve found–with a head and body the size of a duck’s, sharp claws . . . and a swanlike neck. * Longer than a blue whale and three times taller than a giraffe, Patagotitan is a newly discovered contender for “biggest dinosaur ever.” * The speedy little feathered predator Stenonychosaurus was an anatomical marvel, with retractable claws, asymmetrical ears for advanced hearing, incredible night vision, and a huge brain. * Oviraptor –whose name means “egg thief “–doesn’t deserve its bad rap. This specimen from 1923 is now proven to have been sitting by its own eggs–not stealing another’s. * Sinornithosaurus prove that dinosaurs shed their skin the same way that humans do, rather than sloughing it off all at once like a snake. At-a-glance sidebars put each dinosaur’s diet, size, and location at your fingertips. Stories of harrowing expeditions conjure the thrills of history’s most famous dinosaur hunters. Highlights from recent research reveal what’s new in paleontology today, including scientists’ evolving idea of what dinosaurs actually looked like. (Hint: They were more colorful–and feathery! –than we ever thought before.) And illustrations on virtually every page bring these prehistoric creatures to life in all their glory.