In the comment thread for my post about Microcosm’s rave review in Publisher’s Weekly, outeast writes,

There’s been something I’ve been dying for, and here’s as good a place as any to mention it: real coffee-table editions of your books, meaning lavishly illustrated throughout rather than with a couple of meagre (though nice in themselves) wedges of pictures in the middle. When I’m reading about the different stages parasites go through and so on I want to see it – I want to see the flukes pouring from the toad and all that. And I want books that visitors will ohh and ahh (and eww) over, books that will last for years and that my kids will stumble across a decade from now and show to their fascinated and horrified friends… Pretty pretty please, do tell your publisher!!

Continue reading “Coffee Table Tapeworms? The Harsh Realities of Book Economics” →

Let’s hope the phylogeny of life doesn’t get revised drastically anytime soon, for the sake of this woman…More details–and lots of new tattoos over at my Science Tattoo Emporium. (Plus a cool new category cloud for browsing!) 

Originally published February 22, 2008. Copyright 2008 Carl Zimmer.

Claire d’Alberto of the University of Melbourne writes:

“I would like to share what my friends call my ‘science nerd’ tattoo with you! I am currently doing my PhD in Zoology and have been fascinated by the biological world for as long I can remember, so when I decided to get a tattoo it seemed logical that I look within my field for inspiration….It took 4.5 hours, and certainly didn’t tickle, but I love that I have such a beautiful representation of evolution and the natural world with me all the time.” [Tattooist’s site: http://www.eternalinstinct.com/]

Continue reading “Five Kingdoms” →

Jeremiah Drewel, a geology student at the University of Alaska writes, “This is my personal favorite Deinonychus!”

Carl: Deinonychus holds a special place in the history of paleontology. Its remains were first discovered in 1931 in Montana, but for decades they languished, unstudied, at the American Museum of Natural History. In the 1960s Yale paleontologist John Ostrom discovered a wealth of new fossils from the same species and began to contemplate what the animal was like in real life.

Continue reading “Cousin to Pigeons” →