Nature Books

Fall in step with the Parker family as they travel the country investigating fossil graveyards. Learn how fossils are formed, found, and displayed. A full-color journey through a part of the earth's h

A complete color guide to identifying and investigating gemstones.This book guides you through all aspects of the world of gems, exploring the different characteristics and properties of minerals, gems, and precious metals.Combines cutting-edge writing with beautiful full-color photography that captures the beauty of a fascinating array of natural and cut stones.Presents a wonderfully designed, in-depth directory that identifies each gemstone in turn, exploring every facet of common and rare gemstones, and precious metals.Includes an at-a-glance gallery of gemstones in miniature, plus a failsafe step-by-step identification system.Reveals interesting facts and surrounding folklore, as well as formation, structure, physical properties, and characteristics of gems, and details of how each might be worked and displayed.

Discover how paleontologists dig deep to discover these remains and how they use them to learn more about the plants and animals that once covered the planet. A True Earth Science series presents fascinating facts and fun activities that will engage the budding earth scientist, while exploring the fields of geology, meteorology, ecology, and more. This series includes an age appropriate (grades 3-5) introduction to curriculum-relevant subjects and a robust resource section that encourages independent study. Millions of years ago, Earth was populated by animals unlike any that we know today. The only way to learn anything about these extinct species is to study the remains they have left behind in Earth's rocks and soil.

Planet Earth is a visually stunning guide that takes readers on a journey through the diverse landscapes and ecosystems that make up our planet. With beautiful photographs and informative text, this book is perfect for anyone interested in learning more about our world and the complex relationships that exist between all living things. Users will appreciate the unique and engaging way that this book presents the information, making it accessible and captivating for readers young and old.

This book is perfect for anyone who loves to learn new things and be entertained at the same time. It's packed with 5000 amazing facts on a wide range of topics, from science and history to animals and space. The concise format makes it easy to dip in and out of, making it a great addition to any coffee table or bookshelf.

Ultimate Dinosaurs could be an excellent read for children or adults who are passionate about prehistoric creatures. The book features breathtaking visuals that bring the dinosaurs to life, accompanied by informative text. Readers can learn about everything from what the dinosaurs ate to how they defended themselves, and even discover what might have caused their extinction. If you're a dinosaur enthusiast or looking for a fun educational read, Ultimate Dinosaurs is the perfect choice.

Marvel at the mind-boggling complexity of your brain, more intricate than even the most advanced supercomputer. Discover how human brains differ from those of other anmials, and what they have in common. Journey into the depths of your mind and find out what controls your thoughts, actions, emotions and memories.

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"Discover the World of Dinosaurs" is a fact-packed guide that helps children learn about the extinct creatures. It covers topics such as dino fossils, how they hunted, and the different types of dinosaurs. With engaging illustrations and informative text, this book is perfect for young dinosaur enthusiasts who want to learn more about the fascinating world of these prehistoric beasts.

Find out everything you want to know about the world around us: our mysterious universe; the human body; the secrets of nature; our changing planet; the everyday world, and the marvels of science and technology. This book will help you keep up with new phenomena and new technology and learn to understand the world around you in a fun and engaging way. Lavishly illustrated, this book is a fund of accessible information for all the family.

How does the heart pump blood? How do our eyes see? What does the inside of a bone look like? In all its color and complexity, our body is brought to life in the pages of this ''show-and-tell'' book. The text describes how each system in our body works independently and together with other systems to make us the complex human beings that we are. Large, cutaway illustrations explain what words can't--showing in stunning detail how our body functions to help us breathe, move, reproduce, fight germs, and more. Color illustrations.

Excerpted from the Mineralogy is the science of minerals. To the uninitiated, mineralogy can appear to be a very complicated subject. Many of the disciplines that form its core, such as chemistry, crystallography, physics and mathematics, can constitute forbidding barriers to understanding this fascinating natural science. This book endeavors to eliminate such barriers and to accompany the reader seeking to enter the world of minerals. The primary goals of this introduction are to illustrate some of the principal properties of minerals, present the modern tools used in their study, describe the natural environments in which minerals are formed, and explain the criteria by which minerals are classified. The main section of this book is an illustrated guide to 288 mineral species, all of them illustrated with unique photographs taken by nature photographer Roberto Appiani. Special thanks go to Dr. Federico Pezzotta, Curator of Mineralogy and Petrography at the Museum of Natural History in Milan, Italy, who wrote the section of this introduction that deals with the environments in which minerals are formed. Minerals are crystalline substances that are found in their natural state. Minerals are familiar to everyone, as they compose the rocks and mountains around us, as well as the sand on our beaches and the soil in our gardens. Many of the products we use every day are composed of toothpaste, for example, contains microcrystals of mica, calcite and fluorite, while detergents contain such mineral additives as calcite, dolomite, clays and zeolites. Minerals are components of meteorites and planets, while gemstones are nothing more than rough fragments of crystals, unusually transparent or colorful, that have been cut to emphasize their brilliance and transparency. Minerals have always had great importance in our world; from the dawn of history, each step in mankind's development can be measured by the use of metals. Today, minerals are the principal elements of steel and special alloys, and are integral to electronic and communication devices; they ace also used in the space industry and in the manufacture of a great many everyday items. The science of mineralogy came into being in relatively recent times. In order to understand the scientific criteria that governs its principles, one needs to trace the most important steps along its path over the centuries. The oldest use of minerals is related to primitive humans used natural pigments, hematite reds and manganese oxide blacks, to paint the walls of the caves in which they lived. About 5,000 years ago, the Egyptians were making objects from precious metals, using such colored minerals as malachite, lazurite and the emerald variety of beryl. The first texts to deal with mineralogical subjects were those of the Greek Theophrastus, around 370 B.C., and Pliny the Elder 400 years later. With Historio Naturalis , Pliny describes the perfect geometric shapes of crystals, laying the basis for the science of mineralogy. However, it is the German physician and scientist Georgius Agricola who is considered the father of mineralogy. In De Re Metallica ("On Metals"), first printed in 1556, Agricola describes the mining practices of his day in great detail, especially the techniques for exploiting and refining minerals and the procedures involved in the use of fusion to extract metals. Modern crystallography, the study of the forms that compose crystals, was born between the second half of the 1600s and the end of the 1700s, thanks to the contributions of Nicholas Steno, Carangeot and Romé de l'Isle. In 1801, Abbé René-Just Haüy discovered that minerals are composed of countless "molecules" that exactly reproduce the shape of their crystals, anticipating important discoveries that would only be confirmed a century later. During the 19th century, numerous scientists investigated the chemistry of minerals, among them Swedish chemist Jöns Jakob Berzelius, who established the princip1es of modern mineral classification. The beginning of the 20th century marks a fundamental step in the history of mineralogy, with the dlscovecy of the structure of minerals by German physicist Max von Laue in 1912. Experiments performed using X-rays proved for the first time that minerals are composed of atoms precisely arranged according to exact rules. In the early 1960s, electronic microprobe analysis made possible the study of the chemical composition of minerals, and in comparatively short periods of time, enabled accurate chemical analysis of mineral fragments of even the smallest size (down to 4/100,000 of an inch or 0.001 mm). In the early 1970s, another highly advanced instrument, the transmission electron microscope, went into common use in laboratories and universities (at least those able to afford its high cost). Capable of magnifying millions of times, this tool opened a new frontier in mineralogy, allowing the direct observation of the atoms and the structures that compose minerals.