Anthony J. Martin Libri

What is the best way to survive when the going gets tough? Hiding underground. From penguins to dinosaurs, trilobites, and humans, Anthony Martin reveals the subterranean secret of survival. Humans have "gone underground" for survival for thousands of years, from underground cities in Turkey to Cold War-era bunkers. But our burrowing roots go back to the very beginnings of animal life on Earth. Many animal lineages alive now—including our own—only survived a cataclysmic meteorite strike 65 million years ago because they went underground. On a grander scale, the chemistry of the planet itself had already been transformed many millions of years earlier by the first animal burrows which altered whole ecosystems. Every day we walk on an earth filled with an underground wilderness teeming with life. Most of this life stays hidden, yet these animals and their subterranean homes are ubiquitous, ranging from the deep sea to mountains, from the equator to the poles. Burrows are a refuge from predators, a safe home for raising young, or a tool to ambush prey. Burrows also protect animals against all types of natural disasters. Filled with spectacularly diverse fauna, acclaimed paleontologist and ichnologist Anthony Martin reveals this fascinating, hidden world that will continue to influence and transform life on this planet.

"As the co-discoverer of the first known burrowing dinosaur and a popular science author, Anthony J. Martin is an expert at explaining his fossil-finding work to broad audiences. In this engaging book, Martin uses modern and fossil traces to introduce readers to a menagerie of animals and other lifeforms that dig, crunch, bore, and otherwise reshape our planet. We meet elephants that dig ballroom-sized caves alongside volcanoes, parrotfishes that chew coral reefs and poop out sandy beaches, dinosaur-eating crocodiles, and moon snails that drill into clams, or even other moon snails. In a detective story that spans millions of years, ranging from microbes to whales, Martin shows how when life got hard, life got boring, using bodies and behavior to hide, eat, attack, and defend, affecting both our world and our understanding of evolution, climate, and life itself"--