Europe
A Natural History
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Narrated by:
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Jamie Jackson
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By:
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Tim Flannery
About this listen
From internationally best-selling author and celebrated scientist Tim Flannery, a history of Europe unlike any before: an ecological account of the land itself and the forces shaping life on it.
In Europe: A Natural History, world-renowned scientist, explorer, and conservationist Tim Flannery applies the eloquent interdisciplinary approach he used in his ecological histories of Australia and North America to the story of Europe. He begins 100 million years ago, when the continents of Asia, North America, and Africa interacted to create an island archipelago that would later become the Europe we know today. It was on these ancient tropical lands that the first distinctly European organisms evolved. Flannery teaches us about Europe’s midwife toad, which has endured since the continent’s beginning, while elephants, crocodiles, and giant sharks have come and gone. He explores the monumental changes wrought by the devastating comet strike and shows how rapid atmospheric shifts transformed the European archipelago into a single landmass during the Eocene.
As the story moves through millions of years of evolutionary history, Flannery eventually turns to our own species, describing the immense impact humans had on the continent’s flora and fauna - within 30,000 years of our arrival in Europe, the woolly rhino, the cave bear, and the giant elk, among others, would disappear completely. The story continues right up to the present, as Flannery describes Europe’s leading role in wildlife restoration, and then looks ahead to ponder the continent’s future: with advancements in gene editing technology, European scientists are working to recreate some of the continent’s lost creatures, such as the great ox of Europe’s primeval forests and even the woolly mammoth.
Written with Flannery’s characteristic combination of elegant prose and scientific expertise, Europe: A Natural History narrates the dramatic natural history and dynamic evolution of one of the most influential places on Earth.
©2018 Tim Flannery (P)2019 Audible, Inc.Listeners also enjoyed...
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Story
In recent years, the common perception of the Neanderthals has been transformed, thanks to new discoveries and paradigm-shattering scientific innovations. It turns out that the Neanderthals' behavior was surprisingly modern: they buried the dead, cared for the sick, hunted large animals in their prime, harvested seafood, and communicated with spoken language. Meanwhile, advances in DNA technologies are compelling us to reassess the Neanderthals' place in our own past.
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Fascinating Subject... Soporific Reader
- By Andrew E. Yarosh on 11-21-17
By: Dimitra Papagianni, and others
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Why Evolution Is True
- By: Jerry A. Coyne
- Narrated by: Victor Bevine
- Length: 9 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
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Why evolution is more than just a theory: it is a fact. In all the current highly publicized debates about creationism and its descendant "intelligent design", there is an element of the controversy that is rarely mentioned: the evidence, the empirical truth of evolution by natural selection.
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As great as everyone says it is
- By Joseph on 12-01-10
By: Jerry A. Coyne
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The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs
- A New History of a Lost World
- By: Steve Brusatte
- Narrated by: Patrick Lawlor
- Length: 10 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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In this stunning narrative spanning more than 200 million years, Steve Brusatte, a young American paleontologist who has emerged as one of the foremost stars of the field - discovering 10 new species and leading groundbreaking scientific studies and fieldwork - masterfully tells the complete, surprising, and new history of the dinosaurs, drawing on cutting-edge science to dramatically bring to life their lost world and illuminate their enigmatic origins, spectacular flourishing, astonishing diversity, cataclysmic extinction, and startling living legacy.
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"The Rise of the Scientists Who Study Dinosaurs"
- By Daniel Powell on 09-16-18
By: Steve Brusatte
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The Ancestor's Tale
- A Pilgrimage to the Dawn of Evolution
- By: Richard Dawkins
- Narrated by: Richard Dawkins, Lalla Ward
- Length: 8 hrs and 55 mins
- Abridged
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In The Ancestor's Tale, evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins offers a masterwork: an exhilarating reverse tour through evolution, from present-day humans back to the microbial beginnings of life four billion years ago. Throughout the journey, Dawkins spins entertaining, insightful stories and sheds light on topics such as speciation, sexual selection, and extinction. The Ancestor's Tale is at once an essential education in evolutionary theory and riveting in its telling.
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Please do an unabridged version!
- By MovieExpertise on 09-29-16
By: Richard Dawkins
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The Sediments of Time
- My Lifelong Search for the Past
- By: Meave Leakey, Samira Leakey
- Narrated by: Susan Lyons
- Length: 14 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
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Preeminent paleoanthropologist Meave Leakey brings us along on her remarkable journey to reveal the diversity of our early pre-human ancestors and how past climate change drove their evolution. She offers a fresh account of our past, as recent breakthroughs have allowed new analysis of her team’s fossil findings and vastly expanded our understanding of our ancestors. Meave’s own personal story is replete with drama, from thrilling discoveries on the shores of Lake Turkana to run-ins with armed herders and every manner of wildlife, to raising her children....
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Brilliant!
- By tess koffler on 04-07-21
By: Meave Leakey, and others
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Domesticated
- Evolution in a Man-Made World
- By: Richard C. Francis
- Narrated by: Eric Jason Martin
- Length: 13 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
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Without our domesticated plants and animals, human civilization as we know it would not exist. We would still be living at subsistence level as hunter-gatherers if not for domestication. It is no accident that the cradle of civilization - the Middle East - is where sheep, goats, pigs, cattle, and cats commenced their fatefully intimate associations with humans.
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Well, what did you expect?
- By Mark on 03-25-16
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Unbound
- How Eight Technologies Made Us Human, Transformed Society, and Brought Our World to the Brink
- By: Richard L. Currier
- Narrated by: Noah Michael Levine
- Length: 10 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
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Although we usually think of technology as something unique to modern times, our ancestors began to create the first technologies millions of years ago in the form of prehistoric tools and weapons. Over time, eight key technologies gradually freed us from the limitations of our animal origins.
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Good facts, not much else
- By Joel B. Gordon on 10-30-16
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The World Before Us
- The New Science Behind Our Human Origins
- By: Tom Higham
- Narrated by: John Sackville
- Length: 9 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
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A fascinating investigation of the origin of humans based on incredible new discoveries and advanced scientific technology.
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Wonderfully Accessible
- By Deborah N on 11-02-21
By: Tom Higham
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When Life Nearly Died
- The Greatest Mass Extinction of All Time
- By: Michael J. Benton
- Narrated by: Julian Elfer
- Length: 11 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
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Today it is common knowledge that the dinosaurs were wiped out by a meteorite impact 65 million years ago that killed half of all species then living. It is far less widely understood that a much greater catastrophe took place at the end of the Permian period 251 million years ago: at least 90 percent of life on earth was destroyed. When Life Nearly Died documents not only what happened during this gigantic mass extinction, but also the recent renewal of the idea of catastrophism.
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Obscurity to Enlightenment - A Mystery Revealed
- By Dipam on 03-18-21
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The Galápagos
- A Natural History
- By: Henry Nicholls
- Narrated by: James Adams
- Length: 5 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
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The Galapagos were once known to the sailors and pirates who encountered them as Las Encantadas: the enchanted islands, home to exotic creatures and dramatic volcanic scenery. In The Galapagos, science writer Henry Nicholls offers a lively natural and human history of the archipelago, charting its evolution from deserted wilderness to scientific resource (made famous by Charles Darwin) and global ecotourism hot spot.
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Thought-Provoking
- By Jean on 10-23-18
By: Henry Nicholls
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How to Clone a Mammoth
- The Science of De-Extinction
- By: Beth Shapiro
- Narrated by: Coleen Marlo
- Length: 7 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
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Could extinct species, like mammoths and passenger pigeons, be brought back to life? The science says yes. In How to Clone a Mammoth, Beth Shapiro, evolutionary biologist and pioneer in "ancient DNA" research, walks listeners through the astonishing and controversial process of de-extinction.
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Very Readable Take on a Complex Subject
- By John on 04-26-15
By: Beth Shapiro
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How the Dog Became the Dog
- From Wolves to Our Best Friends
- By: Mark Derr
- Narrated by: David Colacci
- Length: 8 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
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That the dog evolved from the wolf is an accepted fact of evolution and history, but the question of how wolf became dog has remained a mystery, obscured by myth and legend. How the Dog Became the Dog posits that dog was an evolutionary inevitability in the nature of the wolf and its human soul mate. The natural temperament and social structure of humans and wolves are so similar that as soon as they met on the trail they recognized themselves in each other.
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Interesting and thorough, but not for everyone
- By N. Rogers on 12-12-11
By: Mark Derr