❚❚❚❙❙❙❘❘❘ Books
name is the small or fine-leaved shrubs that dominate the fynbos. There are three shrubland types that are broadly categorised as belonging to the fynbos region – true fynbos, renosterveld and strandveld. The book includes all three when ‘fynbos’ is referred to. Perhaps fortunately, fynbos grows in nutrient-poor sandy soils that are unsuited to conventional agriculture and it covers a large area of the Western Cape region. This book covers just about everything you could possibly want to know about the fynbos. The biome is discussed in detail. Fire management is all important and there is a section on how to burn your own land when you are lucky enough to own a tract of fynbos that requires seasonal burning. Alien management is discussed, as is the management of natural vegetation fragments in agricultural and urban environments. Essentially the nine chapters in the book provide all you require to understand the ecology and management of this wonderful vegetation. The guide has been compiled to allow land users to manage the veld sensibly, but is also a wonderful compilation of information for anyone interested in this type of vegetation.
Your body BodyWorks. By Anna Claybourne. (Cape Town. Struik Lifestyle. 2014) How do you hear, see and smell? How do muscles make you move? Why is blood red? Are you ready to discover how your body works? This book is described as ‘bursting with revolting facts and cool activities – the perfect book for budding biologists’. I would add health professionals to that. This is not a collection of facts, but a romp through the incredible world of the human body – a complex organism, but easy to understand if approached in this way. Each organ or system is described and then explained using activities that are easy to set up and do not require lots of equipment – useful at school and at home – and for kids of all ages. Anyone who wants to learn about their body would enjoy this book.
Ancient beasts Famous Dinosaurs of Africa. By Anusuya Chinsamy-Turan. Illustrated by Luis V Rey. (Cape Town. Struik Nature. 2014) Although this book is written for children it will appeal to anyone who loves dinosaurs and I know plenty of adults who do. The word dinosaur means ‘terrible lizards’ but as the introduction to the book explains, dinosaurs were not lizards. They were specialised reptiles that descended from a prehistoric group of reptiles called archosaurs, which means ‘ruling reptiles’. The archosaurs also gave rise to flying reptiles called pterosaurs and to the crocodilians from which crocodiles and birds descended – the only living relatives of this group. There is a dinosaur family tree that explains all these relationships. The earliest dinosaurs evolved during the Triassic Period and the group was present on Earth until towards the end of the Cretaceous Period. Between the Triassic and the Cretaceous there was massive continental movement of the Earth’s crust and so the group spread across the globe. The process of fossilisation and how fossils are excavated is explained in a simple way, leading into early dinosaur discoveries in Africa – from Madagascar, to South Africa to Tanzania. Dinosaurs were a diverse group and the book is split into sections dealing with fish-eating dinosaurs, meat-eating dinosaurs, the armoured sauropods and all the other groupings including cannibals and sociable dinosaurs – not forgetting the famous flying dinosaurs. Suggested projects are making a cast of a ‘fossil’, making a model dinosaur, examining tracks made in sand (to work out what sort of animal made the track) and a quiz about dinosaurs to be answered after reading the book. One of the most interesting of the projects is testing the effectiveness of the stomach stones or gastroliths that are found in dinosaur stomachs (fossils of course) in breaking down vegetation and generally aiding digestion. This is their function in the modern animals in which gastroliths are found, such as ostriches, crocodiles and seals. A really fun book! 10 |3 2014
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