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116d

The Inquisitive Biologist turns 8! Here's the latest review...

How would life have evolved had the dinosaurs survived? This facsimile reprint of Dougal Dixon's second classic work of speculative zoology imagines the answer and remains as captivating and entertaining as it was in 1988.

https://inquisitivebiologist.com/2025/09/19/book-review-the-new-dinosaurs-an-alternative-evolution/

#Scicomm #SpeculativeZoology #Dinosaurs #Palaeontology #Paleontology #Books #BookReview #Bookstodon @bookstodon

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114d

This week's #NewBooks at the library: Some classic literature that I bought second-hand.
- A Plague of Sheep: Environmental Consequences of the Conquest of Mexico, published by Cambridge University Press (which was removed from the holdings of the University of Plymouth Charles Seale-Hayne Library just down the road from me!)
- Carl Safina's classic Song for the Blue Ocean: Encounters Along the World's Coasts and Beneath the Seas, published by Henry Holt
- and Extinctions in Near Time: Causes, Contexts, and Consequences, published by Springer.

#Extinction #Biodiversity #Palaeontology #Paleontology #NaturalHistory #NatureWriting #EnvironmentalHistory #Books #Scicomm #Bookstodon @bookstodon

A photo of three books standing on a small, brown, wooden table. The out-of-focus background shows black shelves full of books.

On the left, A Plague of Sheep, showing a black cover with the title in large font.

In the middle, Song for the Blue Ocean, showing a colour photo of a calm ocean with a breaching dolphin.

On the right, Extinctions in Near Time, showing a black cover with the title in white front and a white diagram of a world map with small drawings of various species of now extinct megafauna dotted around the map.

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48d

New review: Spinosaur Tales brings together two of the finest popular palaeontology writers for a nuanced and detailed overview of this challenging group of dinosaurs.

https://inquisitivebiologist.com/2025/11/26/book-review-spinosaur-tales-the-biology-and-ecology-of-the-spinosaurs/

#Books #BookReview #Bookstodon #Dinosaurs #Theropods #Spinosaurs #Spinosaurus #Fossils #Evolution #Paleontology #Palaeontology #Scicomm @bookstodon

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25d

New review fresh in for #FossilFriday: Bringing to life two palaeontological expeditions and excelling at explaining scientific concepts, The Lost Dinosaurs of Egypt goes deeper into the tragic history behind Spinosaurus and resurrects the forgotten Ernst Stromer.

https://inquisitivebiologist.com/2025/12/19/book-review-the-lost-dinosaurs-of-egypt/

#Books #BookReview #Bookstodon #Dinosaurs #Theropods #Spinosaurs #Spinosaurus #Fossils #Paleontology #Palaeontology #Scicomm @bookstodon

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1y

Oops,

Pocket mammoths really existed. I only knew them from Elder Scrolls Online:

https://en.m.uesp.net/wiki/Online:Pocket_Mammoth_(pet)

But according to @wikipedia, they also existed on Crete:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mammuthus_creticus

Image from @uesp

#Mammoth #Mastodon #Gaming #Science #Paleontology #NaturalHistory #ElderScrollsOnline

The illustration shows a small pocket mammoth with light-coloured stripes on its flank. The screenshot is from the computer game "The Elder Scrolls Online"

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Edited 1y ago

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15d

Okay, how about we do one more review before the year is out? Coming soon to https://inquisitivebiologist.com

#Books #BookReview #Bookstodon #Dinosaurs #Fossils #Evolution #Paleontology #Palaeontology #Scicomm @bookstodon

A photo of four books standing on a small, brown, wooden table. The out-of-focus background shows black shelves full of books.

On the left, a stack of three books, showing their spines. From top to bottom: Spinosaur Tales, The Lost Dinosaurs of Egypt, and Jurassic West.

On the right, standing up, The Desert Bones, heavily annotated with yellow post-it notes. The cover shows a colour drawing of Spinosaurus on a sandy plain with two crocodylians in the foreground, and some sauropods in the background. The drawing is by Joschua Knüppe.

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13d

The Inquisitive Biologist looks back at 2025 and picks his five favourite books. Palaeontology, aerobiology, speleology, degrowth, and geomicrobiology top this year's list.

https://inquisitivebiologist.com/2025/12/31/year-list-the-inquisitive-biologists-top-5-reads-of-2025/

#Books #BookOfTheYear #BookReview #Bookstodon #Scicomm #Paleontology #Palaeontology #Aerobiology #HistoryOfScience #ScienceHistory #HistSci #Speleology #Caves #Lechuguilla #Economics #Degrowth #Microbiology #Geology #Geomicrobiology #EdgarAllanPoe #EAPoe #Biography #Literature #Goth #Gothic #Horror #ScienceConvention #ScienceFair @markwitton @princetonupress @princetonnature @Carl_Zimmer @timparrique @TetZoo @bookstodon

A composite picture of five book covers.

The top row shows three covers: King Tyrant (with a moody Tyrannosaurus rex picture by Mark Witton), Air-Borne (showing a colourful picture of lots of spores, pollen, and other small airborne particles), and Lechuguilla Cave (showing an otherworldly photo of a cave with yellow ecrustations fringing an azure blue/green pool)

The bottom row shows two covers: Slow Down or Die (showing a photo of part of a large merry-go-round with people in seats that hang from chains) and Intraterrestrials (showing a colourful aerial picture of a hot spring with yellow, pink, and green colours caused by microbes)

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10d

This week's #NewBooks at the library: Some more unusual acquisitions from 2025.

- I purchased the last copy of the definitive retrospective on the #palaeoart of Zdenek #Burian from Albatros Media. Volume 3 focuses on his artwork of prehistoric humans. All these books are written in Czech, but the artwork is just lavish, and I'm a sucker for period palaeoart.

- I found a second-hand copy of the reissue of #AlexanderVonHumboldt's Views of Nature, released by the University of Chicago Press.

- #Spookslot - 44 jaar te gast bij de geesten, a Dutch book I hunted down via a friend, which was released to commemorate the closure of one of the most beloved attractions, Het Spookslot (a haunted house), in De #Efteling, a well-known Dutch amusement park I used to go to quite often as a child. I know they have completely rebuilt it into a new ride now with nods to the classic panoramic show, but I haven't visited it yet.

#Books #Paleontology #Palaeontology #HumanEvolution #Anthropology #HistoryOfScience #ScienceHistory #HistSci #Scicomm #Bookstodon @bookstodon

A photo of three books standing on a small, brown, wooden table. The out-of-focus background shows black shelves full of books and part of the beech-coloured laminate floor.

On the left, lying down, Views of Nature, showing a painting a verdant green jungle landscape.

In the middle, standing up on a pile of two other large books, Praveký Svet Zdenka Buriana, Kniha 3: Cesta k Cloveku, a large cloth-bound hardback showing two pieces of colour artwork of classic Czech palaeoartist Zdenek Burian: a cave bear and a hominin sitting down on his haunches while leaning on a stick. The narrow yellow paper wrapper obscures part of the cover and shows the title in Czech.

On the right, lying down, Spookslot - 44 jaar te gast bij de geesten, a slim but rather large square book with a colour photo of a ruined castle at night, lit up by several colourful spotlights. This the Spookslot, a haunted house in the Dutch attraction park De Efteling.

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2d

This week's #NewBooks at the library: An early review copy of the 3-volume The Princeton Encyclopedia of Dinosaurs. What will you be doing with your January? Well...

#Books #Bookstodon #FossilFriday #Fossils #Paleontology #Palaeontology #Dinosaurs #Scicomm @princetonupress @bookstodon