The monkey's voyage how improbable journeys shaped the history of life

Summary: How did species wind up where they are today? Scientists have long conjectured that plants and animals dispersed throughout the world by drifting on large landmasses as they broke up, but in The Monkey's Voyage, biologist Alan de Queiroz offers a radical new theory that displaces this passive view. He describes how species as diverse as monkeys, baobab trees, and burrowing lizards made incredible long-distance ocean crossings: pregnant animals and wind-blown plants rode rafts and icebergs and even stowed away on the legs of sea-going birds to create the map of life we see today.

Record details

ISBN: 9780465069767 (electronic bk.)
ISBN: 0465069762 (electronic bk.)
Physical Description: electronic resource
remote
1 online resource : ill. (some col.), maps.
Publisher: New York : Basic Books, c2014.

Content descriptions

General Note:	Description based upon print version of record. Multi-User.
Bibliography, etc. Note:	Includes bibliographical references and index.
Formatted Contents Note:	Of garter snakes and Gondwana -- Earth and life. From Noah's ark to New York : the roots of the story ; The fragmented world ; Over the edge of reason ; New Zealand stirrings -- Trees and time. The DNA explosion ; Believe the forest -- The improbable, the rare, the mysterious, and the miraculous. The green web ; A frog's tale ; The monkey's voyage ; The long, strange history of the Gondwanan islands -- Transformations. The structure of biogeographic "revolutions" ; A world shaped by miracles -- The driftwood coast.