‘If you are not already addicted to Tim Flannery’s writing, discover him now.’ – Jared Diamond, author of Collapse and Guns, Germs and Steel

‘Engagingly written and a real labour of love (down to the tiny fin at the bottom of each right hand page). Give this book to the wannabe palaeontologist in your life’ – MAIL ON SUNDAY

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Imagine a ferocious marine hunter up to twenty metres long, weighing twice as much as a humpback whale and ten times more than Tyrannosaurus rex. With jaws that can open two metres wide, crammed with 276 serrated fangs, it can bite down with the greatest force of any animal that has ever lived.

This is the Megalodon, also known as ‘the Bigtooth’, and it swam in our waters three million years ago. Compared with the dinosaurs, wiped out 66 million years ago, this is but a stone’s throw into our planet’s shadowy past when monsters reigned. Yet the Megalodon has been largely absent from the fossil record, leaving behind only a smattering of teeth and vertebrae prized by collectors, its existence steeped in mystery… until now.

Marking a milestone in palaeontology, Tim Flannery, celebrated environmentalist, zoologist and explorer, and his scientist daughter Emma, tell the story of the giant shark for the first time. Big Meg follows the quest to demystify the colossus that left Earth with barely a trace, reveals where and how it lived, and discusses the theories and haunting stories surrounding this ancient legendary creature, including that it may still stalk the deep…

This is the biography of the ultimate apex predator – a vital piece of the great natural history of our planet – and a compelling exploration of its awesome grip on the human imagination today.
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‘Tim Flannery is the real thing: a man with a gift for lucid exposition, who can really make his subject come alive.’ Literary Review

‘This man is a national treasure, and we should heed his every word’ Sunday Telegraph

‘The best book on the history of life on Earth I have ever read’ Tom Holland

‘Epically cinematic… A book of almost unimaginable riches’ Sunday Times

This is the past as we’ve never seen it before. Otherlands is an epic, exhilarating journey into deep time, showing us the Earth as it used to exist, and the worlds that were here before ours.

Award-winning young palaeobiologist Thomas Halliday immerses us in a series of ancient landscapes, from the mammoth steppe in Ice Age Alaska to the lush rainforests of Eocene Antarctica, with its colonies of giant penguins, to Ediacaran Australia, where the moon is far brighter than ours today. We visit the birthplace of humanity; we hear the crashing of the highest waterfall the Earth has ever known; and we watch as life emerges again after the asteroid hits, and the age of the mammal dawns.

Otherlands is a staggering imaginative feat: an emotional narrative that underscores the tenacity of life – yet also the fragility of seemingly permanent ecosystems, including our own. To read it is to see the last 500 million years not as an endless expanse of unfathomable time, but as a series of worlds, simultaneously fabulous and familiar.

It is difficult to conceive of the vast scale of the history of life on Earth, from the very first living organisms sparking into life in hydrothermal deep-sea vents to the dizzying diversity of life today. The evolution of life is a sweeping epic of a tale, with twists and turns, surprising heroes and unlikely survivors.

The Earth beautifully distils this complex story into a meaningful scale. In taking a closer look at 47 carefully selected organisms over fifteen periods in our planetary history, this book tells the whole story of life on Earth, and the interconnectedness that unites us through our ecosystems and planetary history.

Prepare to be confounded by the ingenuity of evolutionary biologies, humbled by our own brief part in this epic history, and disquieted by our disproportionate impact on the world we call home.

Trees clean air and water; hoverflies and bees pollinate our crops; the kingfisher inspired the construction of high-speed trains. In Tapestries of Life, bestselling author Anne Sverdrup-Thygeson explains how closely we are all connected with the natural world, highlighting our indelible link with nature’s finely knit system and our everyday lives.

In the heart of natural world is a life-support system like no other, a collective term that describes all the goods and services we receive – food, fresh water, medicine, pollination, pollution control, carbon sequestration, erosion prevention, recreation, spiritual health and so much more. In this utterly captivating book, Anne Sverdrup-Thygeson sets out to explore these wonderful, supportive elements – taking the reader on a journey through the surprising characteristics of the natural world.

Ever since we first started discovering dinosaurs in the early-1800s, our obsession for uncovering everything about these creatures has been insatiable. Each generation has made huge strides in trying to better our understanding of these animals and in the past twenty years, we have made more discoveries than in the previous two hundred.

There have been extraordinary advances in palaeontological methods and ever more dinosaur fossils promise a landslide of new data and huge leaps forward in our understanding of these incredible animals. Over time, we have been bale to look at the sizes and shapes of bones, we have identified patches of fossil skin, we have looked at footprints and bite marks and we’ve calculated mass estimates and walking speeds.

With surprisingly little data to work from, we can put together a picture of an animal that has been extinct for a million human lifetimes. But for all our technological advances, and two centuries of new data and ideas, there is stull much more we don’t know. What parasites and diseases afflicted them? How did they communicate? Did they climb trees? How many species were there?

In The Future of Dinosaurs, palaeontologist Dr David Hone looks at the recent strides in scientific research and the advanced knowledge we’ve gathered in recent years, as well as what we hope to learn in the future about these most fascinating of extinct creatures.
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‘The best book on the history of life on Earth I have ever read’ Tom Holland

‘Epically cinematic… A book of almost unimaginable riches’ Sunday Times

This is the past as we’ve never seen it before.

Otherlands is an epic, exhilarating journey into deep time, showing us the Earth as it used to exist, and the worlds that were here before ours. Travelling back in time to the dawn of complex life, and across all seven continents, award-winning young palaeobiologist Thomas Halliday gives us a mesmerizing up close encounter with eras that are normally unimaginably distant.

Halliday immerses us in a series of ancient landscapes, from the mammoth steppe in Ice Age Alaska to the lush rainforests of Eocene Antarctica, with its colonies of giant penguins, to Ediacaran Australia, where the moon is far brighter than ours today. We visit the birthplace of humanity; we hear the crashing of the highest waterfall the Earth has ever known; and we watch as life emerges again after the asteroid hits, and the age of the mammal dawns. These lost worlds seem fantastical and yet every description – whether the colour of a beetle’s shell, the rhythm of pterosaurs in flight or the lingering smell of sulphur in the air – is grounded in the fossil record.

Otherlands is a staggering imaginative feat: an emotional narrative that underscores the tenacity of life – yet also the fragility of seemingly permanent ecosystems, including our own. To read it is to see the last 500 million years not as an endless expanse of unfathomable time, but as a series of worlds, simultaneously fabulous and familiar.

Dinosaurs are not what you thought they were – or at least, they didn’t look like you thought they did. The world-leading palaeontologist Michael J. Benton brings us a new visual guide to the world of the dinosaurs, showing how rapid advances in technology and amazing new fossil finds have changed the way we see dinosaurs forever. Stunning new illustrations from palaeoartist Bob Nicholls display the latest and most exciting scientific discoveries in vibrant colour.

No book before this has been so rigorous in its use of new data that finally tell us how dinosaurs actually looked. From Sinosauropteryx, the first dinosaur to have its colour patterns identified – a ginger and white striped tail – by Benton’s team at Bristol University in 2010, to the recent research on the mixed feathers and scales of Kulindadromeus, this is the first book to be based on cutting-edge scientific research.

Each chapter focuses on one particular species, featuring a specially commissioned illustration that brings to life the latest scientific breakthroughs, with accompanying text exploring how palaeontologists have become able to determine new details such as the patterns on skin and the colours of feathers of animals that lived millions of years ago. This will be a visual compendium to surprise and challenge everything you thought you knew about what dinosaurs looked like and how they lived.

With over 150 illustrations in colour

Packed with more than 700 full-colour illustrations, this definitive pocket guide paints a vivid portrait of extraordinary dinosaurs and prehistoric animals, and the ecosystems they lived in millions of years ago.

Journey back in time and discover the incredible lives and habitats of dinosaurs, pterosaurs, marine reptiles, and prehistoric beasts. This fascinating guide explores every era of prehistoric life, from the Precambrian and Palaeozoic eras, when animals first began evolving to the Jurassic and Mesozoic era, which first saw the flourishing and then the eventual extinction of the dinosaurs.

Learn more about prehistoric animals and the world they inhabited millions of years ago through detailed profiles of 200 dinosaurs and other ancestors of modern animals. These profiles are jargon-free and based on the latest science. This dinosaur encyclopedia is filled with crystal-clear artwork and photographs, fossils, and replica models showing the unique features of the different species.

A Visual Guide to 200 Dinosaurs and Prehistoric Animals

Part of the relaunched series of the popular DK Handbooks, this fact-filled book features a refreshed design and updated content. Packed with jaw-dropping images, fascinating dinosaur facts and straight-forward explanations, it’s the perfect gift for budding palaeontologists of all ages or geology students.

Inside the pages of this dinosaur encyclopedia from DK Books, you’ll discover:

– Maps indicating the location of where each animal’s fossils have been found
– Illustrations detailing the size of each animal in comparison to humans
– Detailed, jargon-free profiles of 200 species with fun facts for quick reference