YOU wouldn鈥檛 think that a book of black and white photographs of animal skeletons could be so beautiful, so dramatic and so evocative of life. But there are no static taxonomic shots of bones here: these are skeletons arranged in dynamic poses, with heads cocked, jaws open and limbs seemingly tensed. After looking at them for a while you no longer see the bones, but the animals they once were 鈥� a fox pouncing on a vole, a diving gannet or, as in this photo, a flying lemur preparing to take to the air. The images effortlessly bring home what is drummed into biology students 鈥� the fact of our common ancestry. With the flesh stripped away, the similarities between what we normally think of as wildly different animals are plain to see. The text does a fine job of telling the story of evolution, but it is hard to outshine these images.
Evolution 鈥� Learn more about the struggle to survive in our comprehensive special report.
Evolution (in Action)
Thames & Hudson