Natural History Archives

The Deep History of Ourselves: The Four-Billion-Year Story of How We Got Conscious Brains

A leading neuroscientist offers a history of the evolution of the brain from unicellular organisms to the complexity of animals and human beings today

Renowned neuroscientist Joseph LeDoux digs into the natural history of life on earth to provide a new perspective on the similarities between us and our ancestors in deep time. This page-turning survey of the whole of terrestrial evolution sheds new light on how nervous systems evolved in animals, how the brain developed, and what it means to be human. […Learn More]

The Human Swarm: How Our Societies Arise, Thrive, and Fall

The epic story and ultimate big history of how human society evolved from intimate chimp communities into the sprawling civilizations of a world-dominating species […Learn More]

Wild New World: The Epic Story of Animals and People in America

A deep-time history of animals and humans in North America, by the best-selling and award-winning author of Coyote America.

In 1908, near Folsom, New Mexico, a cowboy discovered the remains of a herd of extinct giant bison. By examining flint points embedded in the bones, archeologists later determined that a band of humans had killed and butchered the animals 12,450 years ago. […Learn More]

A Natural History of the Future: What the Laws of Biology Tell Us about the Destiny of the Human Species

A leading ecologist argues that if humankind is to survive on a fragile planet, we must understand and obey its iron laws

Our species has amassed unprecedented knowledge of nature, which we have tried to use to seize control of life and bend the planet to our will. In A Natural History of the Future, biologist Rob Dunn argues that such efforts are futile. […Learn More]

Why Sharks Matter: A Deep Dive with the World’s Most Misunderstood Predator

Get submerged in the amazing world of sharks! Your expert host, award-winning marine biologist Dr. David Shiffman, will show you how—and why—we should protect these mysterious, misunderstood guardians of the ocean.

Sharks are some of the most fascinating, most ecologically important, most threatened, and most misunderstood animals on Earth. More often feared than revered, their role as predators of the deep have earned them a reputation as a major threat to humans. But the truth is that sharks are not a danger to us—they’re in danger from us. […Learn More]

An Immense World: How Animal Senses Reveal the Hidden Realms Around Us

In An Immense World, Ed Yong coaxes us beyond the confines of our own senses, allowing us to perceive the skeins of scent, waves of electromagnetism, and pulses of pressure that surround us. We encounter beetles that are drawn to fires, turtles that can track the Earth’s magnetic fields, fish that fill rivers with electrical messages, and even humans who wield sonar like bats. We discover that a crocodile’s scaly face is as sensitive as a lover’s fingertips, that the eyes of a giant squid evolved to see sparkling whales, that plants thrum with the inaudible songs of courting bugs, and that even simple scallops have complex vision. […Learn More]

Otherlands: A Journey Through Earth’s Extinct Worlds

This book is an exploration of the Earth as it used to exist, the changes that have occurred during its history, and the ways that life has found to adapt―or not. It takes us from the savannahs of Pliocene Kenya to watch a python chase a group of australopithecines into an acacia tree; to a cliff overlooking the salt pans of the empty basin of what will be the Mediterranean Sea just as water from the Miocene Atlantic Ocean spills in; into the tropical forests of Eocene Antarctica; and under the shallow pools of Ediacaran Australia, where we glimpse the first microbial life. […Learn More]

Fossil Men: The Quest for the Oldest Skeleton and the Origins of Humankind

It is the ultimate mystery: where do we come from? In 1994, a team led by fossil-hunting legend Tim White uncovered a set of ancient bones in Ethiopia’s Afar region. Radiometric dating of nearby rocks indicated the resulting skeleton, classified as Ardipithecus ramidus—nicknamed “Ardi”—was an astounding 4.4 million years old, more than a million years older than the world-famous “Lucy.” The team spent the next 15 years studying the bones in strict secrecy, all while continuing to rack up landmark fossil discoveries in the field and becoming increasingly ensnared in bitter disputes with scientific peers and Ethiopian bureaucrats. […Learn More]

A (Very) Short History of Life on Earth: 4.6 Billion Years in 12 Pithy Chapters

In the tradition of Richard Dawkins, Bill Bryson, and Simon Winchester―An entertaining and uniquely informed narration of Life’s life story.

In the beginning, Earth was an inhospitably alien place―in constant chemical flux, covered with churning seas, crafting its landscape through incessant volcanic eruptions. Amid all this tumult and disaster, life began. The earliest living things were no more than membranes stretched across microscopic gaps in rocks, where boiling hot jets of mineral-rich water gushed out from cracks in the ocean floor. [ […Learn More]

Book cover of Gory Details by Erika Engelhaupt

Gory Details: Adventures From the Dark Side of Science

Infused with Mary Roach-style humor and science, this narrative illuminates the gross, strange, morbid, and outright absurd realities of our world.

With wicked wit and a dash of morbid curiosity, this provocative narrative from the author of National Geographic’s popular Gory Details blog takes us on a fascinating journey through an astonishing new reality where our weirdest and wildest fascinations will be illuminated. […Learn More]