The Tree of Life

Combining cutting-edge genetics, a dollop of history and terrifically bizarre creatures, this endlessly entertaining and exciting account is essential reading. – Matthew Cobb Telford is one of our generation’s most brilliant biologists and The Tree of Life is a wonderful and vivid guide to evolution’s marvels. – David George Haskell If you’ve ever wondered how all of life is related, how we came to be, and how we know, then this brilliant and beautifully written book is for you. The greatest story ever told, presented with exemplary clarity and style. – Tim Blackburn Rich with anecdote and infectious enthusiasm, The Tree of Life should delight anyone with even a passing interest in the miracle that is life on our planet. – Henry Gee Beautiful… a breezy and very accessible way to get readers to think like scientists, and to see the tangled branches of our near and distant relatives all at once. – Thomas Halliday A rollicking ride through the history of the natural world and the scientists who helped unravel it. Marvellous! – Seirian Sumner

Max Telford is an evolutionary biologist and the Jodrell Chair of Zoology and Comparative Anatomy at University College London where he founded the Centre for Life’s Origins and Evolution and the Telford Lab. Max has won several awards for his research (including a visiting Fellowship at All Souls College, Oxford) and has spent the last three decades researching the shape of the tree of life, his broader aim to discover the earliest events in the evolution of the animal kingdom. He lives in London. This is his first book.