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Relics: Travels in Nature's Time Machine
On any night in early June, if you stand on the right beaches of America’s East Coast, you can travel back in time all the way to the Jurassic. For as you watch, thousands of horseshoe crabs will emerge from the foam and scuttle up the beach to their spawning grounds, as they’ve done, nearly unchanged, for more than 440 million years.
Horseshoe crabs are far from the only contemporary manifestation of Earth’s distant past, and in Relics , world-renowned zoologist and photographer Piotr Naskrecki leads readers on an unbelievable journey through those lingering traces of a lost world. With camera in hand, he travels the globe to create a words-and-pictures portrait of our planet like no other, a time-lapse tour that renders Earth’s colossal age comprehensible, visible in creatures and habitats that have persisted, nearly untouched, for hundreds of millions of years.
Naskrecki begins by defining the concept of a relic—a creature or habitat that, while acted upon by evolution, remains remarkably similar to its earliest manifestations in the fossil record. Then he pulls back the Cambrian curtain to reveal relic after eye-popping katydids, ancient reptiles, horsetail ferns, majestic magnolias, and more, all depicted through stunning photographs and first-person accounts of Naskrecki’s time studying them and watching their interactions in their natural habitats. Then he turns to the habitats themselves, traveling to such remote locations as the Atewa Plateau of Africa, the highlands of Papua New Guinea, and the lush forests of the Guyana Shield of South America—a group of relatively untrammeled ecosystems that are the current end point of staggeringly long, uninterrupted histories that have made them our best entryway to understanding what the prehuman world looked, felt, sounded, and even smelled like.
The stories and images of Earth’s past assembled in Relics are beautiful, breathtaking, and unmooring, plunging the reader into the hitherto incomprehensible reaches of deep time. We emerge changed, astonished by the unbroken skein of life on Earth and attentive to the hidden heritage of our planet’s past that surrounds us.
Horseshoe crabs are far from the only contemporary manifestation of Earth’s distant past, and in Relics , world-renowned zoologist and photographer Piotr Naskrecki leads readers on an unbelievable journey through those lingering traces of a lost world. With camera in hand, he travels the globe to create a words-and-pictures portrait of our planet like no other, a time-lapse tour that renders Earth’s colossal age comprehensible, visible in creatures and habitats that have persisted, nearly untouched, for hundreds of millions of years.
Naskrecki begins by defining the concept of a relic—a creature or habitat that, while acted upon by evolution, remains remarkably similar to its earliest manifestations in the fossil record. Then he pulls back the Cambrian curtain to reveal relic after eye-popping katydids, ancient reptiles, horsetail ferns, majestic magnolias, and more, all depicted through stunning photographs and first-person accounts of Naskrecki’s time studying them and watching their interactions in their natural habitats. Then he turns to the habitats themselves, traveling to such remote locations as the Atewa Plateau of Africa, the highlands of Papua New Guinea, and the lush forests of the Guyana Shield of South America—a group of relatively untrammeled ecosystems that are the current end point of staggeringly long, uninterrupted histories that have made them our best entryway to understanding what the prehuman world looked, felt, sounded, and even smelled like.
The stories and images of Earth’s past assembled in Relics are beautiful, breathtaking, and unmooring, plunging the reader into the hitherto incomprehensible reaches of deep time. We emerge changed, astonished by the unbroken skein of life on Earth and attentive to the hidden heritage of our planet’s past that surrounds us.
- GenresNonfictionScienceNature
384 pages, Hardcover
First published September 15, 2011
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Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
December 2, 2020
This book is, first and foremost, a whole lot of really gorgeous photographs. Sometimes of small insects, sometimes of large trees, but always worth a long look. This fellow knows what he's doing with a camera.
His topic, is the sometimes a bit controversial topic of "relicts", once known as "living fossils". Not exactly unchanged (a point Naskrecki makes repeatedly through the book), because no species remains unchanged over long periods of time, there are nonetheless some species (and even ecosystems) that look a lot more like our planet's distant past than most species do. Horseshoe crabs, gingko trees, tuataras (lizards from New Zealand), and a host of more-primitive-than-most insects.
We don't normally think of, say, flowers and bees and ants and birds as being new-fangled, but by a certain standard they most certainly are. You think humans have messed with our ecosystem; the alliance of flowering plants and their pollinators has swept all before it, leaving only the far north and a few scattered other regions unconquered. Looking closely at "relicts" such as cycad trees gives us an idea of just how alien the life of Earth would look to us, if we travelled back in time far enough. Forget about the dinosaurs; the plant life would shock us.
Inevitably, in a book of this type, there is a lot of eco-Puritan "but we evil humans are destroying it all, and we must stop!" Which might be true enough, but really, saying it in a book of this type is preaching to the choir, and has been done manicly for over 50 years now, and doesn't seem to be working. Some other tactic seems called for. But it's not most of the book, so it's easily skimmed over.
What stays with you is a sense of just how vast and ancient life on this planet is, and how long the chain is that connects us all to the beginning of life on earth in the distant past. As an antidote, perhaps the ultimate antidote, to an internet and news cycle relentlessly focused on what is new, it is a welcome dose of perspective.
His topic, is the sometimes a bit controversial topic of "relicts", once known as "living fossils". Not exactly unchanged (a point Naskrecki makes repeatedly through the book), because no species remains unchanged over long periods of time, there are nonetheless some species (and even ecosystems) that look a lot more like our planet's distant past than most species do. Horseshoe crabs, gingko trees, tuataras (lizards from New Zealand), and a host of more-primitive-than-most insects.
We don't normally think of, say, flowers and bees and ants and birds as being new-fangled, but by a certain standard they most certainly are. You think humans have messed with our ecosystem; the alliance of flowering plants and their pollinators has swept all before it, leaving only the far north and a few scattered other regions unconquered. Looking closely at "relicts" such as cycad trees gives us an idea of just how alien the life of Earth would look to us, if we travelled back in time far enough. Forget about the dinosaurs; the plant life would shock us.
Inevitably, in a book of this type, there is a lot of eco-Puritan "but we evil humans are destroying it all, and we must stop!" Which might be true enough, but really, saying it in a book of this type is preaching to the choir, and has been done manicly for over 50 years now, and doesn't seem to be working. Some other tactic seems called for. But it's not most of the book, so it's easily skimmed over.
What stays with you is a sense of just how vast and ancient life on this planet is, and how long the chain is that connects us all to the beginning of life on earth in the distant past. As an antidote, perhaps the ultimate antidote, to an internet and news cycle relentlessly focused on what is new, it is a welcome dose of perspective.
June 1, 2014
This book caught my eye in the bookstore. Just the quality of the image on the cover told me that it is worth reading. I have studied biology and although I specialized in biotechnology, I have always had a soft spot for evolution. The concept of this book, searching for evolutionary relics in different microenvironments around the world, is fascinating. Dr. Naskrecki is a wonderful photographer and a great scientist and it was a joy to read this book. As I said I have a biology training and still this book was very informative in many aspects; yet it was written in a way very accessible to everybody. Brilliant stuff.
July 17, 2025
Quand j'ai obtenu ce livre usagé, à une fraction de son prix, je pensais me procurer un ouvrage principalement de photographie d'êtres vivants divers avec de légère description d'intérêt biologique. J'ai été surprise de réaliser que c'était aussi un journal de voyage écrit avec humour et une sincère tendresse. En finissant cette lecture, je réalise à quel point je l'ai apprécié. J'ai aimé découvrir des concepts, des animaux ainsi que les réflexions de l'auteur. Cette lecture a été vectrice d'émotions, beaucoup plus que ce que j'avais anticipé. Je le recommande à toute personne aimant la biologie. Certains défauts sont quand même à noter, la version française a deux coquilles de traduction et j'ai trouvé que certains commentaires étaient étranges. Pour donner un exemple, l'auteur parle d'une rencontre avec une salamandre cornue et ce passage se termine par le fait qu'il met le spécimen dans un sac, on ne sait pas pourquoi et aucune autre information n’est donnée outre celle de l'anecdote. D'autres passages, comme celui-ci, m’ont semblé étranges et parfois dans le jugement (commentaire sur une position religieuse, le créationnisme, la manière de l'amener est plus qu'une critique scientifique).
November 4, 2020
Browsed only... be warned about the closeup pictures of insect appendages and arachnid jaws
January 13, 2025
Fantastic!! Somehow the author injects tons of humor! I strongly recommend. Hilarious passage: "One night after coming back to the camp after a stroll in the forest, I saw a small, unbelievably cute possum ambling along our long, improvised workbench. I gave a shout to Ken Aplin, the expedition's mammal specialist, who became very excited, and together we tried to corner the little furry creature. "Catch him if you can," he yelled, "these possums never bite!" Since I was positioned closer to the animal than Ken I grabbed it, and its sharp teeth immediately sank into my hand, and blood poured over my fingers. "Take the bite.
Don't let go," said Ken calmly, proving once again that there is no obstacle, moral or otherwise, that will stop a biologist from obtaining the specimen."
Don't let go," said Ken calmly, proving once again that there is no obstacle, moral or otherwise, that will stop a biologist from obtaining the specimen."
November 19, 2012
Fantastic photography. The narrative is very interesting mixed in with history, biology and Naskrecki's anecdotal experience. The complexity of life on earth and the variation leaves me marveling at how all of life unfolded. And with such thoughts as the "Butterfly effect" it is even more amazing so that so much diversity in life has appeared (and some disappeared) over the billions of years of the earth's existence. For me at least it all speaks of a Creator.
January 13, 2013
Great photography. The text was informative. Sad to learn "living fossils" don't really exist. Horseshoe crabs have kept the same morphology for 400 million years, but have evolved to adapt to different environments.
June 2, 2012
The editor seems to have skipped huge swathes of the text, but this book is worth it for the pictures alone.
April 17, 2012
Gorgeous photographs, but the text didn't grab me and pull me in the way I'd hoped. Not all scientists can write like Stephen Jay Gould, unfortunately.
September 4, 2012
Beautiful.
December 29, 2012
This is a fantastic book! The best of its kind in naturalist field trip writing with absolutely gorgeous pictures.
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews