I'm really proud to announce that my new book, Dinosaurs to Chickens: How Evolution Works, is out now.
This is a book that I would have devoured as a kid, as it makes critical connections between modern and prehistoric animals. Growing up it felt like we learned about two totally separate groups of animals: extinct dinosaurs and living everything else. The dinosaurs had their time, and now modern species had theirs.
But learning about animals that way left so many questions in my mind. Where did modern animals come from? What were they doing when dinosaurs were around? How are the two groups connected?
This book helps answer those connections, and helps kids understand how life is connected from across all ages of the earth's history. It celebrates the work of thousands of scientists working to piece together the stories of insects, fish, amphibians, reptiles, birds, and mammals.
What I did was take 30 modern animals and work backwards to understand how they got to be the way they are. How did evolution help some insects become bumblebees and other become butterflies? How did some amphibians become frogs and others cave salamanders? How did reptiles evolve from amphibians and then take over the world?
There are millions of questions to answer, and millions of stories to tell. Just taking one example at random: the Mexican Free-tailed Bat. Mammals have existed for hundreds of millions of years, but for most of that time we lived fairly hidden lives in the shadow of dinosaurs. Dinosaurs dined on early mammals, and so in response most early mammals evolved to keep out of sight: living underground and only coming out at night. Our senses of smell, sight, hearing, and touch improved to keep us safe and allow us to hunt in the dark.
Then, the asteroid came. Living underground and being able to hunt at night really helped us survive the impact and its aftermath, and mammals survived where dinosaurs did not. Mammals (and birds) evolved rapidly to fill the voids left by dinosaurs: without so many predators around mammals could safely grow bigger and stay out during the day, which in turn gave them freedom to develop in new ways.
Not all mammals did, of course. Being small and staying out of sight was still a lifestyle that worked, and many mammals kept on living that way after the dinosaurs disappeared. Many modern rodents live and look very much like ancient mammals.
But some did change. The ancestor of modern bats is believed to have been a shrew-like animals who lived in trees hunting insects. Maneuverability in the treetops was helpful for these creatures -- moving from tree to tree was safer than remaining on the ground, and the more acrobatic they were the better they could catch insects -- and the shrews born with adaptations that permitted them to jump, steer, and glide were successful.
Gliding gave rise to flying over the course of millions of years. The oldest known bat, Icaronycteris, is dated to the Early Eocene, some 52 million years ago. But they weren't quite the modern bats we have today -- the retained a long, rodent-like tail and their wings didn't yet connect to their legs. There was more to come -- echolocation to help bats pinpoint prey in the dark; living in caves for safety. Scientists have traced all of these changes and more until we get to the modern Mexican Free-tailed Bat and all the other varieties of bats living around the world.
That's a lot, but it's so much fun. I learned so much while researching and writing this book, and I was consistently filled with gratitude for the scientists who work on these questions and, frankly, for the fact that I am lucky enough to live in this planet with so many incredible neighbors.
I hope you and your kids will like it, too. Buy it now!
