Evolution

Fülszöveg

In lonely areas of the world, evolution has worked for millions of years undisturbed by life's usual fierce competition. On a trip to Tierra del Fuego in 1932, Charles Darwin found that the bleak isolation of that desolate region had produced an unusual race of Indians who were able to endure the miserable climate and savage conditions of their environment. Three years later, while observing the strange animal life of the Galápagos Islands, he was astonished again by the results of such insularity. These and subsequent observations led Darwin to his historic and heretical theory of evolution: that man is simply a Johnny-come-lately in the long parade of life on earth-not the product of a special, separate creation. All living things vary, Darwin said, and in the struggle for survival the fittest survive. The process of natural selection enforces the endurance of the strongest, weeds out the unfit, and rewards the adaptable with more and healthier offspring. Natural selection alsó... Tovább

Fülszöveg

In lonely areas of the world, evolution has worked for millions of years undisturbed by life's usual fierce competition. On a trip to Tierra del Fuego in 1932, Charles Darwin found that the bleak isolation of that desolate region had produced an unusual race of Indians who were able to endure the miserable climate and savage conditions of their environment. Three years later, while observing the strange animal life of the Galápagos Islands, he was astonished again by the results of such insularity. These and subsequent observations led Darwin to his historic and heretical theory of evolution: that man is simply a Johnny-come-lately in the long parade of life on earth-not the product of a special, separate creation. All living things vary, Darwin said, and in the struggle for survival the fittest survive. The process of natural selection enforces the endurance of the strongest, weeds out the unfit, and rewards the adaptable with more and healthier offspring. Natural selection alsó brings about the peculiar habits, brilliant markings. exquisite colouration and remarkable disguises which Darwin called life's "ever-branching and beautiful ramifications". Here, in the pages.of EVOLUTION, you will see somé of the curious and lovely results of natural selection . . . the male peacock with his magnificent tail feathers . . . plants that have taken on the colour and shape of stones . . . insects that masquerade as other creatures ... the duck-billed platypus, that evolutionary enigma. In EVOLUTION you will follow the whole story of creation-from the theories of Darwin's predecessors such as Thales, Heraclítus, Aristotle, Lamarck and Lyell to the latest scientific discoveries by today's archeologists, geologists, sociologists and naturalists. You will learn about Mendel's laws of heredity . . . explore the mutation theory of De Vries. You will jóin the search for the missing skull of Peking man . . . see how mutations arise, and why somé species have become extinct. You will discover why only one of all the manlike species has survived-Homo sapiens. In EVOLUTION you will learn how revolutionary new discoveries-such as the miraculous DNA molecules-have provided man with fresh clues to his ancestry and tools to control his future. Vissza