The Great Paleozoic Crisis

The Great Paleozoic Crisis
Title The Great Paleozoic Crisis PDF eBook
Author Douglas H. Erwin
Publisher Columbia University Press
Pages 342
Release 1993
Genre Science
ISBN 0231074662

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The culmination of more than fifty years of research by the foremost living expert on plant classification, Diversity and Classification of Flowering Plants is an important contribution to the field of plant taxonomy. In the last decade, the system of classifying plants has been thoroughly revised. Instead of describing every individual family, Takhtajan includes descriptions in keys to families, which he calls "descriptive keys." The advantage of descriptive keys is that they give both the characteristic features of the families and their differences. The delimitation of families and orders drastically differs from the one accepted by the Englerian school and from the one accepted in Arthur Cronquist's system. Takhtajan favors the smaller, more natural families and orders, which are more coherent and better-defined, where characters are easily grasped, and which are more suitable for information retrieval and phylogenetic studies, including cladistic analysis (because it reduces polymorphic codings).

Carboniferous Giants and Mass Extinction

Carboniferous Giants and Mass Extinction
Title Carboniferous Giants and Mass Extinction PDF eBook
Author George R. McGhee Jr.
Publisher Columbia University Press
Pages 279
Release 2018-08-07
Genre Science
ISBN 0231543387

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Picture a world of dog-sized scorpions and millipedes as long as a car; tropical rainforests with trees towering over 150 feet into the sky and a giant polar continent five times larger than Antarctica. That world was not imaginary; it was the earth more than 300 million years ago in the Carboniferous period of the Paleozoic era. In Carboniferous Giants and Mass Extinction, George R. McGhee Jr. explores that ancient world, explaining its origins; its downfall in the end-Permian mass extinction, the greatest biodiversity crisis to occur since the evolution of animal life on Earth; and how its legacies still affect us today. McGhee investigates the consequences of the Late Paleozoic ice age in this comprehensive portrait of the effects of ancient climate change on global ecology. Carboniferous Giants and Mass Extinction examines the climatic conditions that allowed for the evolution of gigantic animals and the formation of the largest tropical rainforests ever to exist, which in time turned into the coal that made the industrial revolution possible—and fuels the engine of contemporary anthropogenic climate change. Exploring the strange and fascinating flora and fauna of the Late Paleozoic ice age world, McGhee focuses his analysis on the forces that brought this world to an abrupt and violent end. Synthesizing decades of research and new discoveries, this comprehensive book provides a wealth of insights into past and present extinction events and climate change.

Deep-time Perspectives on Climate Change

Deep-time Perspectives on Climate Change
Title Deep-time Perspectives on Climate Change PDF eBook
Author Mark Williams
Publisher Geological Society of London
Pages 604
Release 2007
Genre Nature
ISBN 9781862392403

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Terra

Terra
Title Terra PDF eBook
Author Michael Novacek
Publisher Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Pages 632
Release 2008-11-11
Genre Science
ISBN 1466821604

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A paleontologist awakens us to the "extinction event" that human activity is bringing about today The natural world as humans have always known it evolved close to 100 million years ago, with the appearance of flowering plants and pollinating insects during the age of the dinosaurs. Its tremendous history is now in danger of profound, catastrophic disruption. In Terra, a brilliant synthesis of evolutionary biology, paleontology, and modern environmental science, Michael Novacek shows how all three can help us understand and prevent what he (and others) call today's "mass extinction event." Humanity's use of land, our consumption, the pollution we create, and our contributions to global warming are causing this crisis. True, the fossil record of hundreds of millions of years reveals that wild and bounteous nature has always evolved not quietly but thunderously, as species arise, flourish, die off, and are replaced by new species. We learn from paleontology and archaeology that for 50,000 years, human hunting, mining, and agriculture have changed many localities, sometimes irrevocably. But today, Novacek insists, our behavior endangers the entire global ecosystem. And if we disregard—through ignorance, antipathy, or apathy—the theory of evolution that developed with our modern understanding of the Earth's past, we not only impede enlightenment but threaten any practical strategy for our own survival. The evolutionary future of the entire living planet depends on our understanding this.

The Cretaceous-Tertiary Event and Other Catastrophes in Earth History

The Cretaceous-Tertiary Event and Other Catastrophes in Earth History
Title The Cretaceous-Tertiary Event and Other Catastrophes in Earth History PDF eBook
Author Graham Ryder
Publisher Geological Society of America
Pages 586
Release 1996-01-01
Genre Science
ISBN 9780813723075

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"This volume atempts to explore and clarify the relationship among the geological records, the extinctions, and the causes of catastrophes for life in Earth's history. Most of the papers address the geological record and the extinctions across the Cretaceou-Teriary boundary, and the buried Chicxulub structure that is now consensually deemed to be of impact origin and to be intimately related to that boundary." (GSA website).

Biotic Recovery from Mass Extinction Events

Biotic Recovery from Mass Extinction Events
Title Biotic Recovery from Mass Extinction Events PDF eBook
Author M. B. Hart
Publisher Geological Society of London
Pages 404
Release 1996
Genre Science
ISBN 9781897799451

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The Late Devonian Mass Extinction

The Late Devonian Mass Extinction
Title The Late Devonian Mass Extinction PDF eBook
Author George R. McGhee
Publisher Columbia University Press
Pages 338
Release 1996
Genre Computers
ISBN 9780231075053

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Based on two decades of research, The Late Devonian Mass Extinction reviews the many theories that have been presented to explain the global mass extinction that struck the earth over 367 million years ago, considering in particular the possibility that the extinction was triggered by multiple impacts of extraterrestrial objects.