Helen Plum Library

Learn what it's like to come face-to-face with some of the dinosaurs that once roamed the Earth through these "actual-size" illustrations

"The fascinating lives and puzzling demise of some of the largest animals on earth. Until a few thousand years ago, creatures that could have been from a sci-fi thriller--including gorilla-sized lemurs, 800-pound birds, crocodiles that weighed a ton or more--roamed the earth. These great beasts, or "megafauna," lived on every habitable continent and on many islands. With a handful of exceptions, all are now gone. What caused the disappearance of these...

Before humans took their first steps, there were billions of years of vibrant and varied life-forms on Earth. Discover the story of our planet during this time, from the formation of the universe to the first mammals and all the incredible life that flourished in between. Covering ice ages and fossils, the first life in the sea and on land, the time of the dinosaurs, and the rise of mammals, Martin Jenkins navigates through millennia of prehistory...

"A mesmerizing overview of the world as it was when glaciers covered the earth and long-extinct creatures like the woolly mammoths and saber-toothed cats battled to survive. Go back 20,000 years ago to a time of much colder global temperatures when glaciers and extensive sheets of ice covered much of our planet. As these sheets traveled, they caused enormous changes in the Earth's landscape and climate, leading to the evolution of creatures such as...

For hundreds of thousands of years Great Auks thrived in the icy seas of the North Atlantic, bobbing on the waves, diving for fish and struggling up onto rocky shores to mate and hatch their fluffy chicks. But by 1844, not a single one of these magnificent birds was alive. In this stunningly illustrated non-fiction picture book, award-winning author and illustrator Jan Thornhill tells the tragic story of these birds that "weighed as much as a sack...

The evolution, biology, and discovery of the dinosaurs and other prehistoric animals that lived in South America. Inspired by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Lost world "More than a hundred years ago, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle wrote a novel called The Lost World with the exciting premise that dinosaurs and other prehistoric beasts still ruled in South America. Little did Conan Doyle know, there were terrifying monsters in South America--they just happened...

What happens when you try to recreate a woolly mammoth-fascinating science, or conservation catastrophe? In Rise of the Necrofauna, Wray takes us deep into the minds and labs of some of the world's most progressive thinkers to find out. She introduces us to renowned futurists like Stewart Brand and scientists like George Church, who are harnessing the powers of CRISPR gene editing in the hopes of "reviving" extinct passenger pigeons, woolly mammoths,...

"A playful, witty, and resonant novel in which a single mother and her two teen daughters engage in a wild scientific experiment and discover themselves in the process, from the award-winning writer of Sons and Daughters of Ease and Plenty. Jane is a serious scientist on the cutting-edge team of a bold project looking to "de-extinct" the wooly mammoth. She's privileged to have been sent to Siberia to hunt for ancient DNA, but there's a catch: Jane's...

"Describes the characteristics, food, habitat, behavior, and extinction of dodos"--