They've decorated queens, jesters, plague doctors, Aztec priests, and the fabled birds of paradise. They've linked documents from the Constitution to the novels of Jane Austen. They've inspired legends and literature, from Icarus to Shakespeare. Applying the research of paleontologists, ornithologists, biologists, engineers, and even art historians, Hanson asks: What are feathers? How did they evolve? What do they mean to us? Engineers call feathers the most efficient insulating material ever discovered. In Feathers, biologist Thor Hanson tells a sweeping natural history of feathers, as they've been used to fly, protect, attract, and adorn through time and place. Yet, their story has never been fully told. Their story begins in the Jurassic and leads through the development of flight to high fashion. Feathers are quite an evolutionary marvel: aerodynamic, insulating, beguiling. This is the untold natural and cultural history of nature's finest invention.
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