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Full Description
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.
Contents
Preface; Acknowledgements; 1. What is an animal?; 2. Before there were animals; 3. How to make a fossil; 4. The Cambrian explosion; 5. How to make a species; 6. Jellyfish and their kin; 7. How to make a tree; 8. The enigmatic urbilaterian; 9. Animal symmetry and heads; 10. A plethora of worms; 11. Trends in animal complexity; 12. Where the octopus is king; 13. How to make an animal; 14. Exoskeletons galore; 15. Extinction; 16. Mouth first, mouth second; 17. Comparing embryos; 18. Larvae, mouthparts and moulting; 19. The animal toolkit; 20. Vertebrate origins and evolution; 21. From water to land to water; 22. Variation and inheritance; 23. Evolutionary novelties; 24. Human origins and evolution; 25. Animal plasticity; 26. The nature of adaptation; 27. The direction of evolution; 28. Animal extremophiles; 29. Extraterrestrial animals?; 30. The ghost in the machine; Appendix; References; Index.
