By Kenneth J. McNamara
Throughout the 400 thousand years that humanity has been amassing fossils, sea urchin fossils, or echinoids, have constantly been one of the so much prized, from the Paleolithic period, after they adorned flint axes, to this present day, while paleobiologists examine them for clues to the earth’s history.
In The Star-Crossed Stone, Kenneth J. McNamara, knowledgeable on fossil echinoids, takes readers on an important fossil hunt, with stops in background, paleontology, folklore, mythology, paintings, faith, and masses extra. starting with prehistoric occasions, while urchin fossils have been used as jewellery, McNamara finds how the fossil crept into the non secular and cultural lives of societies round the world—the roots of the general five-pointed famous person, for instance, may be traced to the development stumbled on on urchins. yet McNamara’s imaginative and prescient is even broader than that: utilizing our wisdom of early behavior of fossil amassing, he explores the evolution of the human brain itself, drawing extraordinary conclusions approximately humanity’s earliest appreciation of good looks and the 1st stirrings of creative expression. alongside the way in which, the fossil turns into a nexus in which we meet exceptional eccentrics and visionary archaeologists and boost new insights into subject matters as likely disparate as hieroglyphics, Beowulf, or even church organs.
An idiosyncratic occasion of technology, nature, and human ingenuity, The Star-Crossed Stone is as fascinating and unforgettable because the fossil at its heart.
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