An illumination of the the hidden world of rocks - the secret-keepers of past environments, of changing climates and the pulse of life over billions of years.
Ken McNamara Libri
Ken McNamara è un paleontologo la cui duratura fascinazione per i fossili è iniziata durante l'infanzia. Il suo lavoro è profondamente radicato nella sua dedizione per tutta la vita allo studio e alla raccolta di questi antichi resti, una passione che continua come curatore presso il Western Australia Museum. McNamara colma il divario tra rigore scientifico e coinvolgimento pubblico, contribuendo sia a opere accademiche che a mostre museali accessibili. La sua ricerca e i suoi scritti offrono una finestra unica sul mondo preistorico, riflettendo una carriera plasmata da un'incrollabile curiosità.
Dragons' Teeth and Thunderstones. The Quest for the Meaning of Fossils
- 288pagine
- 11 ore di lettura
For at least half a million years, people have been doing some very strange things with fossils. Long before a few seventeenth-century minds started to decipher their true, organic nature, fossils had been eaten, dropped in goblets of wine, buried with the dead, and adorned bodies. What triggered such curious behavior was the belief that some fossils could cure illness, protect against being poisoned, ease the passage into the afterlife, ward off evil spirits, and even kill those who were just plain annoying. But above all, to our early prehistoric ancestors, fossils were the very stuff of artistic inspiration. Drawing on archaeology, mythology, and folklore, Ken McNamara takes us on a journey through prehistory with these curious stones, and he explores humankind’s unending quest for the meaning of fossils.
