The Seventy Great Mysteries of the Natural World

Michael Benton is a palaeontologist who has made fundamental contributions to understanding the history of life, particularly concerning how biodiversity changes through time. He has led in integrating data from living and fossil organisms to generate phylogenies - solutions to the question of how major groups originated and diversified through time. This approach has revolutionised our understanding of major questions, including the relative roles of internal and external drivers on the history of life, whether diversity reaches saturation, the significance of mass extinctions, and how major clades radiate. A key theme is the Permo-Triassic mass extinction, the largest mass extinction of all time, which took place over 250 million years ago, where he investigates how life was able to recover from such a devastating event.Michael has written engaging books for children on the theme of dinosaurs, as well as a significant number of palaeontology textbooks for university students. He founded the MSc in Palaeobiology at Bristol in 1996, from which more than 450 students have graduated. He has supervised more than 70 PhD students.

New in Thames & Hudson's bestselling 'Seventy' series, this visually stunning and highly topical book is an essential guide to those vital environmental issues that concern us all. The volume's seven sections address an extraordinary range of questions. Were the dinosaurs warm-blooded or not? Why do mammals rule the earth? How did the eye evolve? What will happen to climates in the future? Over sixty of the world's most eminent scientists offer privileged insight into their cutting-edge research and findings, writing always to engage the interest of the general reader.

Origins - The Earth - Evolution - Biogeography and Environments - Plants and Animals - Animal Behaviour - The Future of the Planet