Continent of Curiosities: A Journey through Australian Natural History

• Australian and international focus
• Rich illustrative material

Collecting curiosities was a gentlemanly occupation for wealthy and educated 18th-century Europeans. Few creatures aroused more curiosity than those from Australia. But collections demand organisation, and classification itself reveals patterns to life that cannot be ignored. From a leisurely occupation, the science of biology was born. Cabinets de curiosites became national museums, with specimens from Australia playing an integral role in all kinds of biological debates. Australian museums now foster their own research and continue to provide major and sometimes unexpected perspectives to international scientific developments. Continent of Curiosities follows the thread of individual natural history stories through the scientists of one of Australia's oldest museums, Museum Victoria. Together, these stories weave a history of the development of biological science from an Australian perspective, with insights into the people and places that influence the way we see and understand the natural world around us.

Danielle Clode is science writer, zoologist and researcher. Since completing her doctorate at Oxford University as a Rhodes Scholar, she has been based in the Department of Zoology at the University of Melbourne. Continents of Curiosities: A Journey Through Natural History (Cambridge University Press, 2006), was inspired by the collections at Museum Victoria, where Danielle worked with curators as a scientific interpreter. She wrote Continents of Curiosities as the Thomas Ramsay Science and Humanities Fellow at the museum. Her first book, Killers in Eden (Allen and Unwin, 2001), investigated co-operative hunting between killer whales and whalers on the New South Wales south coast and was turned into an award winning ABC-TV documentary. She has also published a history of Victoria's Land Conservation Council, As If For A Thousand Years (VEAC, 2006). Voyages To The South Seas (Melbourne University Press) tells the story of French naturalists in Australia and won the 2007 Victorian Premier's Award for non fiction. Her latest book, Prehistoric Giants (Museum Victoria), is an accessible account of Australian megafauna. Danielle continues to combine her interest in scientific history with a diverse range of research, editing and teaching, and is currently writing a book on bushfires.

"  beautifully produced "
--Mammalian Biology

 

Acknowledgements;
Part I. Visions from the Old World - The Last Five Hundred Years:
1. Curious collections;
2. A beast named Su;
3. Local knowledge;
Part II. Into the Forests - The Last  250,000 Years:
4. Water, water everywhere;
5. Forests of fire;
6. The mystery of the reappearing possums;
Part III. From Fossils and Bones - The Last  250 Million Years:
7. The case of the missing mollusc;
8. Brainbox;
9. The ape case;
Part IV. Visions of the New Worlds - The Last  Four and a Half Billion Years:
10. Lines in the sea;
11. Shifting continents;
12. Is there life on Mars?;
References and further reading.