Las Animas - Bent County Library District

"A vibrant history of the modern conservation movement-told through the lives and ideas of the people who built it. In the late nineteenth century, as humans came to realize that our rapidly industrializing and globalizing societies were driving other animal species to extinction, a movement to protect and conserve them was born. In Beloved Beasts, acclaimed science journalist Michelle Nijhuis traces the movement's history: from early battles to save...

"In the past year, we have witnessed unprecedented breakthroughs in the seemingly unrelated fields of synthetic biology and exoplanetary astronomy. Just recently, arsenic-based bacteria was discovered in a California lake-both puzzling and electrifying the scientific world. In The Life of Super-Earths, expert astronomer Dimitar Sasselov aims to highlight these groundbreaking findings and explain how what we learn in the laboratory informs our investigation...

"E.O. Wilson, one of the most celebrated scientists in the United States, shows why biodiversity is vital to the future of Earth and to our own species through the story of an African national park that may be the most diverse place on earth, in a gorgeously illustrated book"-- "The remarkable story of how one of the most biologically diverse habitats in the world was destroyed, restored, and continues to evolve--with stunning, full-color photographs...

Text about and photography of experiments, animals, plants, bones, and fossils reveal the ideas and discoveries that have changed our understanding of the natural world and how life began.

"Fifty years after The Andromeda Strain made Michael Crichton a household name, the threat returns, in a gripping sequel that is as terrifyingly realistic and resonant as the original"--

"From acclaimed writer and biologist Sean B. Carroll, a rollicking, awe-inspiring story of the surprising power of chance in our lives and the world. Why is the world the way it is? How did we get here? Does everything happen for a reason or are some things left to chance? Philosophers and theologians have pondered these questions for millennia, but startling scientific discoveries over the past half century are revealing that we live in a world driven...

Anthropologists, scientists who study humans and their ways of life, are continually finding and interpreting artifacts left by our earliest ancestors. They have helped us understand our origins as well as the intriguing cultures that developed as humans spread across Earth. This volume is a concise introduction to this diverse and fascinating field. Readers will learn of the various branches of anthropology, including archeology and biological anthropology,...

"Over the past twenty years, paleontologists have made tremendous fossil discoveries, including fossils that mark the growth of whales, manatees, and seals from land mammals and the origins of elephants, horses, and rhinos. Today there exists an amazing diversity of fossil humans, suggesting we walked upright long before we acquired large brains, and new evidence from molecules that enable scientists to decipher the tree of life as never before. The...

"For thousands of centuries, humans lived near the ocean, wandered right up to its edge, and turned back to the relative safety of the known land. Even when we invented ships and the very bravest among us sailed out, our fears and imaginations took over. What creatures could be living in the unknowable darkness, the bottomless depths? Giant worms, microorganisms that eat metal, faceless fish, giant sea spiders? Marine life is even more otherworldly...

"From New York Times bestselling author Harry Turtledove, the modern master of alternate history, a novel of alien contact set in the tumultuous year of the Watergate scandal. It's 1974, and Jerry Stieglitz is a grad student in marine biology at UCLA with a side gig selling short stories to science fiction magazines, just weeks away from marrying his longtime fiancě. Then his life is upended by grim-faced men from three-letter agencies who want him...