Evolving Animals: The Story of our Kingdom

by Wallace Arthur, Stephen Arthur (Illustrator)

What do we know about animal evolution in the early twenty-first century? How much more do we know today than Darwin did? What are the most exciting discoveries that have been made in the last few decades? Covering all the main animal groups, from jellyfish to mammals, this book considers all of these questions and more. Its 30 short chapters, each written in a conversational, nontechnical style and accompanied by numerous original illustrations, deal equally with the pattern and the process of evolution - with both evolutionary trees and evolutionary mechanisms. They cover diverse evolutionary themes, including: the animal toolkit, natural selection, embryos and larvae, animal consciousness, fossils, human evolution, and even the possibility of animal life existing elsewhere than on Earth. This unique text will make an excellent introduction for undergraduates and others with an interest in the subject.

Genres: Biology, Science

344 pages, Paperback

First published August 7, 2014

About the author

Wallace Arthur is an evolutionary biologist and science writer. He is Emeritus Professor of Zoology at the University of Galway. He was one of the founding editors of the journal Evolution & Development, serving as an editor for nearly 20 years. He has held visiting positions at Harvard University, Darwin College Cambridge, and the University of Warmia and Mazury in Olsztyn, Poland.

Reviews

[Ewa · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's not bad book at all but hardly about what it's title suggests. Most of the text deals with general issues of biology and you won't learn much about the course of animal evolution reading it. It's various mechanisms are discussed by the author but how and when it all happened is rather scarcely mentioned here and there while there's even chapter on possibilities of alien life which I personally perceive as rather ridiculous an addition in a book like this.