Every Living Thing: Man's Obsessive Quest to Catalog Life, from Nanobacteria to New Monkeys“If you have any interest in life beyond your own, you should read this book.”
Biologist Rob Dunn’s Every Little Thing is the story of man’s obsessive quest to catalog life, from nanobacteria to new monkeys. In the tradition of E.O. Wilson, this engaging and fascinating work of popular science follows humanity’s unending quest to discover every living thing in our natural world—from the unimaginably small in the most inhospitable of places on earth to the unimaginably far away in the unexplored canals on Mars. |
From inside the book
Results 1-5 of 11
Page 4
... discovery . It is a forgotten part of our scientific story . Long before Columbus or Magellan , much of the world had been found . Seldom do we consider what those first great explorers in small , fire - lit communities understood of ...
... discovery . It is a forgotten part of our scientific story . Long before Columbus or Magellan , much of the world had been found . Seldom do we consider what those first great explorers in small , fire - lit communities understood of ...
Page 7
... discovery, more often than not, requires a temporary relaxation of that skepticism. To discover something, you first have to believe it is possible. I wanted to see what lurked between the far-off trees, where a little bird seemed to ...
... discovery, more often than not, requires a temporary relaxation of that skepticism. To discover something, you first have to believe it is possible. I wanted to see what lurked between the far-off trees, where a little bird seemed to ...
Page 12
... discovered and tapped . If Cavinas was like other communities where rubber was discovered , it is safe to assume that for a while every man and most women of Cavinas went to the forest every morning and every night to tap the rubber ...
... discovered and tapped . If Cavinas was like other communities where rubber was discovered , it is safe to assume that for a while every man and most women of Cavinas went to the forest every morning and every night to tap the rubber ...
Page 18
... discovered” one of these communities. There were thousands more. The first challenge then for Western scientists was not so much to discover the birds and the monkeys, the Brazil nuts and the bamboo, as to find the indigenous peoples ...
... discovered” one of these communities. There were thousands more. The first challenge then for Western scientists was not so much to discover the birds and the monkeys, the Brazil nuts and the bamboo, as to find the indigenous peoples ...
Page 20
... discovered " by sci- entists in the last ten years , several were thought by scientists to be hoaxes or myths . In 2008 , for example , a giant turtle , Swinhoe's soft- shelled turtle , long thought by scientists to be extinct in the ...
... discovered " by sci- entists in the last ten years , several were thought by scientists to be hoaxes or myths . In 2008 , for example , a giant turtle , Swinhoe's soft- shelled turtle , long thought by scientists to be extinct in the ...
Contents
23 | |
The Invisible World | 40 |
Part II | 57 |
Dividing the Cell | 133 |
Grafting the Tree of Life | 149 |
Origin Stories | 181 |
Looking Out | 193 |
To Squeeze Life from a Stone | 209 |
The Wrong Elephant? | 224 |
What Remains | 246 |
Endnotes | 257 |
Index | 265 |
Other editions - View all
Every Living Thing: Man's Obsessive Quest to Catalog Life, from Nanobacteria ... Rob Dunn Limited preview - 2009 |
Every Living Thing: Man's Obsessive Quest to Catalog Life, from Nanobacteria ... Rob Dunn Limited preview - 2009 |
Common terms and phrases
Alvin Amazon animals archaea army ants astrobiologists ATBI bacteria Bates beetles began believe biologists biology canopy carabid Carl Sagan Carl Woese Cavinas Cavineño cells centrioles chloroplasts Ciftcioglu collected Costa Rica creatures deep deep-sea vents discovered discovery diversity DNA barcoding Drake E. O. Wilson endosymbiosis estimate eukaryotes everything evolutionary Frank Drake genes Guanacaste human hundred hydrogen sulfide ideas imagined insects Janzen Kajander kind knew later Leeuwenhoek lineages Linnaeus Linnaeus’s living looked Lowell Lynn Margulis Margulis’s Mars Martian methanogens microbes microscope mites mitochondria monkeys moths named species nanobacteria nearly ocean organisms perhaps plants Rettenmeyer Riberalta rock Royal Society rRNA Sami samples scientists seafloor seemed seen space species on Earth story subsurface sumichrasti Swammerdam symbiosis telescope Terry Erwin theory things thought thousand trees tropical forest University Wallace Wirsen wondered