商品描述
Why are we the only species with chins? Where did our backbone come from? Why don't we have wings? For centuries, scientists have chased the secrets of how life on our planet arose, how it assumed its dazzling diversity of forms, and how we humans are related to everything else on Earth. With increasingly sophisticated genetic methods bringing us ever-closer to answers, evolutionary biologist Max Telford takes us inside this quest to reconstruct the "tree of life" the web of relationships between all our planet's species, from humans to mushrooms to bacteria. We learn how the tree of life is key to following evolution's twists and turns, starting with the mysterious "last universal common ancestor" to reach--eventually--you and me; how humans are "really" fish; and how the Venus flytrap got its trap. For any reader fascinated by evolution and natural history, The Tree of Life is an essential portal to the distant past and a window onto our collective origins.
商品描述(中文翻譯)
為什麼我們是唯一有下巴的物種？我們的脊椎來自哪裡？為什麼我們沒有翅膀？幾個世紀以來，科學家們一直在追尋生命在我們星球上是如何起源的，如何形成其驚人的多樣性，以及我們人類與地球上其他一切事物的關係。隨著越來越精密的基因方法讓我們逐漸接近答案，進化生物學家 Max Telford 帶領我們深入這個重建「生命之樹」的探索，這是所有物種之間關係的網絡，從人類到蘑菇再到細菌。我們了解到，生命之樹是追蹤進化曲折歷程的關鍵，從神秘的「最後共同祖先」開始，最終到達你我；人類「實際上」是魚類；以及捕蠅草是如何獲得其捕捉裝置的。對於任何對進化和自然歷史感興趣的讀者來說，《生命之樹》是通往遙遠過去的必經之路，也是我們共同起源的窗口。
