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Richard Dawkins (Narrator) & Lalla Ward (Narrator)Program Format: Author AbridgedCodec: 32 kbps MP3Duration: 8 hours : 54 minutesPublisher: Orion Publishing Group, 2005Original Source: 7 Audio CDsISBN: 0752873210Table of Contents         Cue: 01 The Conceit of Hindsight     00:0002 The General Prologue     00:00 a) The Pilgramage Begins    01:50 b) The Farmer’s Tale    04:11 c) The Cro-Magnon’s Tale    22:1803 Rendezvous Zero – All Humankind    00:00 a) Ape Men     06:0604 Rendezvous One to Nine: Apes and Primates   00:00 a) Rendezvous One: Chimpanzees  – The Bonobo’s Tale   01:52 b) Rendezvous Two: Gorillas    04:38  – The Gorilla’s Tale    06:08 c) Rendezvous 3 to 9: Other Primates   10:4505 Rendezvous Ten – Rodents and Rabbitkind   00:00 a) The Mouse’s Tale    06:1806 Rendezvous Eleven – Laurasiatheres   00:00 a) The Hippo’s Tale     02:1407 Rendezvous Twelve – Xenarthrans    00:00 a) Rendezvous Thirteen: Afrotheres   02:15 b) Rendezvous Fourteen: Marsupials   03:1308 Rendezvous Fifteen – Monotremes    00:00 a) The Duckbill’s Tale    01:1109 Rendezvous Sixteen – Sauropsids    00:00 a) Prologue to the Galapogas Finches’ Tale  02:52 b) The Galapogas Finches’ Tale   06:04 c) The Dodo’s Tale     13:20 d) The Elephant Bird’s Tale    25:1510 Rendezvous Seventeen – Amphibians   00:00 a) The Salamanda’s Tale    01:5711 Rendezvous Eighteen – Lungfish    00:00 a) Rendezvous Nineteen: Ceolocanths   01:0212 Rendezvous Twenty – Ray-Finned Fish   00:00 a) The Leafy Sea Dragon’s Tale   01:13 b) The Pike’s Tale     05:46 c) The Flounder’s Tale    10:39 d) The Mudskipper’s Tale    13:03 e) Rendezvous Twenty-One: Sharks and Their Kin 18:5613 Rendezvous Twenty-Six – Protostomes   00:00 a) The Ragworm’s Tale    04:31 b) The Brine Shrimp’s Tale    11:54 c) The Grasshopper’s Tale    17:21 d) The Rotifer’s Tale    55:39 e) The Barnacle’s Tale    75:38 f ) The Velvet Worm’s Tale    81:0414 Rendezvous 27-37 – Jellys, Sponges, Fungi & Plants  00:00 a) Rendezvous 27-35    00:00 b) Rendezvous Thirty-Six: Plants   01:39 c) The Mixotrich’s Tale    06:5315 The Great Historic Rendezvous    00:0016 Rendezvous 38 and 39: The Prokaryotes   00:00 a) The Risobium’s Tale    00:41 b) Tack’s Tale     23:5517 Canterbury – On the Origin of Heredity   00:0018 The Host’s Return     00:00 a) Kauffman’s Issues and Natural Experiments  03:03 a) Convergent Evolution    14:57 a) Is Evolution Progressive?    35:23 a) Macro- and Micro-Evolution   54:00 a) Evolvability     60:42 b) Other ‘Watersheds’    69:38 c) The Host’s Farewell    78:46 Hardcover ISBN: 0297825038http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0297825038/Paperback ISBN: 0753819961http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0753819961/Audiobook ISBN: 0752873210http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0752873210/Book DescriptionThe Ancestor’s Tale is a pilgrimage back through time; a journey on which we meet up with fellow pilgrims along the route as we and they converge on our common ancestors. Chimpanzees join us at about 6 million years in the past, gorillas at 7 million years, orang utans at 14 million years, as we stride on together, a growing band. The journey provides the setting for a collection of some 40 tales. Each explores an aspect of evolutionary biology through the stories of characters met along the way or glimpsed from afar – the Elephant Bird’s Tale, the Marsupial Mole’s Tale, the Coelacanth’s Tale. Together they give a deep understanding of the processes that have shaped life on Earth: convergent evolution, the isolation of populations, continental drift, the great extinctions. The tales are interspersed with prologues detailing the journey, route maps showing joining lineages, and life-like reconstructions of our common ancestors. The Ancestor’s Tale represents a pilgrimage on an unimaginable scale: our goal is four billion years away, and the number of pilgrims joining us grows vast – ultimately encompassing all living creatures. At the end of the journey lies something remarkable in its simplicity and transformative power: the first, humble, replicating molecules. From Scientific AmericanIn this expansive book, Dawkins, the well-known evolutionary biologist and author (The Selfish Gene, The Blind Watchmaker, A Devil’s Chaplain, among others), gives us an eloquent treatise on evolution, ne-glecting neither the latest developments nor his own provocative views. As the title suggests, Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales provides the model for the book’s conceit–a pilgrimage back through four billion years of life on earth. We join with other organisms at rendezvous points where we find common ancestors, until we arrive at the “grand ancestor of all surviving life.” As Dawkins explains: “Backward chronology in search of ancestors really can sensibly aim towards a single distant target … and we can’t help converging upon it no matter where we start–elephant or eagle, swift or salmonella, wellingtonia or woman…. Instead of treating evolution as aimed toward us, we choose modern Homo sapiens as our arbitrary, but forgivably preferred, starting point for a reverse chronology…. Following Chaucer’s lead, my pilgrims, which are all the different species of living creatures, will have the opportunity to tell tales along the way to their Canterbury, which is the origin of life. It is these tales that form the main substance of this book.” “One of the richest accounts of evolution ever written” – Financial TimesAbout the AuthorRichard Dawkins is an evolutionary biologist renowned throughout the world. He was educated at Oxford where he did his doctorate under the nobel-prize winning ethologist Niko Tinbergen. From 1967-1969 he was an Assistant Professor at the University of California at Berkley. Since 1995 he has been Charles Simonyi Professor of the Public Understanding of Science at Oxford University. His books rank among the most influential intellectual works of our time. Does The Place have a copy of ‘The Selfish Gene’ buried in a product somewhere?