Super Natural: How Life Thrives in Impossible Places by Riley, Alex

Super Natural: How Life Thrives in Impossible Places

From scorching deserts to frozen seabeds, from the highest peaks of the Himalaya to the hadal depths...
$45.70 AUD
$45.70 AUD
SKU: 9781324079187
Product Type: Books
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Author: Alex Riley
Format: Hardcover
Language: English
Subtotal: $45.70
Super Natural: How Life Thrives in Impossible Places by Riley, Alex

Super Natural: How Life Thrives in Impossible Places

$45.70

Super Natural: How Life Thrives in Impossible Places

$45.70
Author: Alex Riley
Format: Hardcover
Language: English

From scorching deserts to frozen seabeds, from the highest peaks of the Himalaya to the hadal depths of the oceans, there are habitats on this Earth that appear hostile to life--yet where, nevertheless, life flourishes. In North American forests, wood frogs awaken each spring from solid blocks of ice. Under the Saharan sun, shielded by silvery hairs, desert ants sprint through the midday heat that is lethal to any other animal. At the bottom of ice-covered lakes, painted turtles pass months without breathing oxygen. Transporting readers to far-flung environments we could never call home, in Super Natural, award-winning science writer Alex Riley paints an awe-inspiring portrait of life's remarkable resilience even under the harshest circumstances.

Riley illuminates ecosystems on every continent to tell the stories of creatures exquisitely adapted to endure unimaginable deprivations--of water, oxygen, food, sunlight--and extremes of heat and cold, of pressure and altitude. To survive half a year without food on barren islands, snakes will shrink and regrow their digestive systems--even their hearts. At the site of the Chernobyl disaster, fungi harness radiation to thrive. Evolution, we see, can and will carve out a niche just about anywhere.

Super Natural shows us how, at nature's furthest limits, the rules of biology as we know them are rewritten--and how, in life's astonishing ingenuity and persistence even in the face of calamity and change, we can find hope for the future of life on Earth.



Author: Alex Riley
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Published: 09/23/2025
Pages: 368
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 1.20lbs
Size: 8.60h x 5.80w x 1.30d
ISBN: 9781324079187


Review Citation(s):
Library Journal 05/01/2025 pg. 10
Publishers Weekly 06/09/2025
Booklist 08/01/2025
Kirkus Reviews 08/15/2025

About the Author
Riley, Alex: - Alex Riley is an award-winning science writer and the author of Super Natural and A Cure for Darkness. A former research scientist at the Natural History Museum in London, he has coauthored peer-reviewed scientific research and published his popular science reporting in New Scientist, PBS's NOVA Next, the BBC, Aeon, and Nautilus Magazine, among others. He lives in Devon, UK, with his family.

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