Book Description

True stories of fossil-hunting adventures around the globe from “a world-class field scientist [and] a highly entertaining writer” (The American Scholar). Michael Novacek, a world-renowned paleontologist who has discovered important fossils on virtually every continent, is an authority on patterns of evolution and on the relationships among extinct and extant organisms. Time Traveler is his captivating account of how his boyhood enthusiasm for dinosaurs became a lifelong commitment to vanguard science. He takes us with him as he discovers fossils in his own backyard in Los Angeles, then goes looking for them in the high Andes, the black volcanic mountains of Yemen, and the incredibly rich fossil badlands of the Gobi Desert. Wherever Novacek goes, he searches for still-undiscovered evidence of what life was like on Earth millions of years ago. Along the way he has almost drowned, been stung by deadly scorpions, been held at gunpoint by a renegade army, and nearly choked in raging dust storms. Fieldwork is very demanding in a host of unusual, dramatic, sometimes hilarious ways, and Novacek writes of its alluring perils with affection and discernment. But in addition to being an enthralling adventure story, Time Traveler makes sense of many complex themes—about dinosaur evolution, continental drift, mass extinctions, new methods for understanding ancient environments, and the evolutionary secrets of DNA in fossil organisms. Includes photos and illustrations “A superb introduction to paleontology.” —Edward O. Wilson “An engaging book [that] gives us an excellent sense of the way paleontologists have arrived at their world-shaking conclusions.” —The New York Times Book Review “Novacek offers a spellbinding natural history of our planet, as well as the equally fascinating story of how he fell into the profession.” —Publishers Weekly