To see accurate pricing, please choose your delivery country.
 
 
United States
£ GBP
All Shops

British Wildlife

8 issues per year 84 pages per issue Subscription only

British Wildlife is the leading natural history magazine in the UK, providing essential reading for both enthusiast and professional naturalists and wildlife conservationists. Published eight times a year, British Wildlife bridges the gap between popular writing and scientific literature through a combination of long-form articles, regular columns and reports, book reviews and letters.

Subscriptions from £33 per year

Conservation Land Management

4 issues per year 44 pages per issue Subscription only

Conservation Land Management (CLM) is a quarterly magazine that is widely regarded as essential reading for all who are involved in land management for nature conservation, across the British Isles. CLM includes long-form articles, events listings, publication reviews, new product information and updates, reports of conferences and letters.

Subscriptions from £26 per year
Academic & Professional Books  Reptiles & Amphibians  Reptiles

Turtles as Hopeful Monsters Origins and Evolution

By: Olivier Rieppel(Author)
207 pages, 28 colour & b/w photos and colour & b/w illustrations
Turtles as Hopeful Monsters
Click to have a closer look
  • Turtles as Hopeful Monsters ISBN: 9780253024756 Hardback Mar 2017 In stock
    £39.99
    #235034
Price: £39.99
About this book Contents Customer reviews Biography Related titles
Images Additional images
Turtles as Hopeful MonstersTurtles as Hopeful MonstersTurtles as Hopeful MonstersTurtles as Hopeful Monsters

About this book

Where do turtles hail from? Why and how did they acquire shells? These questions have spurred heated debate and intense research for more than two hundred years. Brilliantly weaving evidence from the latest paleontological discoveries with an accessible, incisive look at different theories of biological evolution and their proponents, Turtles as Hopeful Monsters tells the fascinating evolutionary story of the shelled reptiles. Paleontologist Olivier Rieppel traces the evolution of turtles from over 220 million years ago, examining closely the relationship of turtles to other reptiles and charting the development of the shell. Turtle issues fuel a debate between proponents of gradual evolutionary change and authors favoring change through bursts and leaps of macromutation. The first book-length popular history of its type, this indispensable resource is an engaging read for all those fascinated by this ubiquitous and uniquely shaped reptile.

Read an extended review on our blog.

Contents

Acknowledgements
Introduction

1. Misplaced Turtles
2. Reptile Classification and Evolution
3. Levels of Evolution
4. Hopeful Monsters
5. The Turtle Shell
6. Fossil Hunting in China

Bibliography
Index

Customer Reviews

Biography

Olivier Rieppel is Rowe Family Curator of Evolutionary Biology at the Field Museum in Chicago. He is on the editorial board of several peer-reviewed scientific journals, and has himself published more than 350 scientific papers and eight books.

By: Olivier Rieppel(Author)
207 pages, 28 colour & b/w photos and colour & b/w illustrations
Media reviews

"Turtles as Hopeful Monsters is a beautifully written and compelling book. Rieppel knows his subject inside out and has produced an authoritative work. But it is so much more than that – it belies a more far-reaching subject area – the practice of evolutionary biology itself [...] The interplay of diverse disciplines including genetics, developmental biology, palaeontology and, of course, philosophy, are all set out alongside delightful personal insights. From Mendel to Hennig, Darwin to Mayr or Goodrich, Goldschmidt and Gould, Rieppel brilliantly analyses the practitioners and the giants of evolutionary theory."
– Nick Fraser, National Museum of Scotland

"Here they are still with us, boxed up in a shell, seeming survivors of the distant geological past: prehistoric creatures, which both predated and outlived the dinosaurs. A symbol in Hindu and Chinese mythology, the turtle supports the earth – but what supports the turtle?"
– Olivier Rieppel, from the introduction

Current promotions
New and Forthcoming BooksNHBS Moth TrapBritish Wildlife MagazineBuyers Guides