Life

The evolutionary mystery of flying may finally be cracked by genetics

Finding out how flight evolved or animals moved onto land is all about a collision of palaeontology and genetics, argue two new books

By Graham Lawton

25 March 2020

New Scientist. Science news and long reads from expert journalists, covering developments in science, technology, health and the environment on the website and the magazine. — Molecular biology is revealing deeper secrets of ancient life like T. rex
Phil Degginger/Alamy

Books

Some Assembly Required: Decoding four billion years of life, from ancient fossils to DNA

Neil Shubin

Oneworld

Fantastic Fossils: A guide to finding and identifying prehistoric life

Donald R. Prothero

Columbia University Press

IN 1871, a now-obscure biologist called St George Jackson Mivart published On the Genesis of Species. As its title suggests, the book was a riposte to Darwin’s theory of natural selection, published in 1859. Mivart had been an avid Darwinian, but the more he thought about it, the stronger his doubts…