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 Livres
Ken McNamara est un paléontologue dont la fascination durable pour les fossiles a commencé dans son enfance. Son travail est profondément enraciné dans son dévouement de toute une vie à l'étude et à la collecte de ces anciens vestiges, une passion qu'il poursuit en tant que conservateur au Western Australia Museum. McNamara jette un pont entre la rigueur scientifique et l'engagement du public, contribuant à la fois à des œuvres savantes et à des expositions de musée accessibles. Ses recherches et ses écrits offrent une fenêtre unique sur le monde préhistorique, reflétant une carrière façonnée par une curiosité inébranlable.
Dragons' Teeth and Thunderstones. The Quest for the Meaning of Fossils
- 288pages
- 11 heures de lecture
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.
