The Woodpecker Mystery: The Inevitability of the Improbable
by Nick Norman, The Franschhoek Press R295 in bookstores
While working on a mining project in Brazil in the 1970s, geologist Nick Norman noticed something peculiar in southern Bahia: a woodpecker that bore a striking resemblance to those he knew back home in South Africa.
During later visits to South America, he saw more and more similar birds and trees. How did they come to be here, on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean? This book is his attempt to explain the mystery, delving into a range of topics like continental drift, plate tectonics and ocean currents.
Norman is best known for his books about geology, including Geological Journeys: A traveller’s (co-written with Gavin Whitfield; 2013) and Box of Rocks (2015). He does a great job of making complicated concepts easy to understand.
