This is the story of the making of the theory of evolution. On the Origin of Species was published on 24 November 1859, but world-changing theories aren't made in a day: our tale begins a decade before Charles Darwin's birth, and spans more than two hundred years. It leads us through the rain forests of South America, navigates polar oceans and central Asian deserts before diving into the very stuff of life itself, the tightly coiled double helix of DNA. It tells the three-billion-year story of life, unearthing ape-men, rhino-sized giant sloths, and the almost alien life-forms that squirmed across Earth's sea floors 500 million years ago. But these aren't the most remarkable creatures in this story: that distinction belongs to the men and women whose drive to discover led them to uncharted shores and to a new understanding of ourselves, of life and of our planet.
Remarkable Creatures circumnavigates the globe with Humboldt, Darwin, Wallace, and Bates. Prodigious collectors of bugs, birds, and anything else that moved, these men spent years - decades even - away from home, endured shipwreck, disease and deprivation in the pursuit of knowledge. With first-hand accounts, Sean Carroll recreates the first epic voyages that gathered the data that forged the theory of evolution. HE then examines the discoveries that confirmed the evolution revolution, looking at paleontology's loveliest bones - 600 million years of natural history as revealed by the magnificent museum of fossils contained within the Earth's crust. Having mined the Earth, he turns to the laboratory, where powerful new technologies are currently delving into the DNA record of life, revealing the secrets of human evolution.
Captivating and lucid, Remarkable Creatures tells the exhilarating story of the scientists who walked where no others had walked, saw what no one else had seen, and thought what no one else had thought. It is a celebration of the infinite miracle of life and the quest to understand it.

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