Extinctions: Twilight of the Species PDF Download

Author: Jean-Baptiste De Panafieu
Publisher: Europe Comics
ISBN:
Category : Young Adult Nonfiction
Languages : en
Pages : 128

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Book Description
Two journalists travel to an island in the Arctic Circle where scientists are searching for fossils of extinct animals. Like all journalists, they have a lot of questions: how is it possible for an entire species to completely disappear? Word has it that we're in the midst of a sixth mass extinction, but what exactly does that mean? How did the first five happen? What is the scientific definition of an extinction? Alexandre Franc adeptly illustrates the narrative by Jean-Baptiste de Panafieu, a specialist in natural sciences and doctor of biological oceanology. Panafieu, who has already authored a number of popular science books, gives a clear explanation of what mass extinctions are, cleverly comparing past extinctions with the one we are witnessing now. The two authors present us with a clear, intelligent, and lighthearted perspective on a fascinating phenomenon.

Author: Paul S. Martin
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520252438
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 276

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Book Description
"Paul S. Martin's innovative ideas on late quaternary extinctions and wildlife restoration have fueled one of science's most stimulating recent debates. He expounds them vividly here, and defends them eloquently. A must-read."—David Rains Wallace, author of Beasts of Eden "This is a marvelous read, by a giant in American prehistory, about one of the greatest mysteries in the earth sciences."—Tim Flannery, author of The Eternal Frontier "Whether or not you agree with Paul Martin, he has shaped how we think about our Pleistocene ancestors and their role in transforming this planet."—Ross D. E. MacPhee, Curator of Mammalogy, American Museum of Natural History

Author: Sharon Levy
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199831548
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 275

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Book Description
Until about 13,000 years ago, North America was home to a menagerie of massive mammals. Mammoths, camels, and lions walked the ground that has become Wilshire Boulevard in Los Angeles and foraged on the marsh land now buried beneath Chicago's streets. Then, just as the first humans reached the Americas, these Ice Age giants vanished forever. In Once and Future Giants, science writer Sharon Levy digs through the evidence surrounding Pleistocene large animal ("megafauna") extinction events worldwide, showing that understanding this history--and our part in it--is crucial for protecting the elephants, polar bears, and other great creatures at risk today. These surviving relatives of the Ice Age beasts now face the threat of another great die-off, as our species usurps the planet's last wild places while driving a warming trend more extreme than any in mammalian history. Deftly navigating competing theories and emerging evidence, Once and Future Giants examines the extent of human influence on megafauna extinctions past and present, and explores innovative conservation efforts around the globe. The key to modern-day conservation, Levy suggests, may lie fossilized right under our feet.

Author: Ross D E MacPhee
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 0393249301
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 386

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Book Description
The fascinating lives and puzzling demise of some of the largest animals on earth. Until a few thousand years ago, creatures that could have been from a sci-fi thriller—including gorilla-sized lemurs, 500-pound birds, and crocodiles that weighed a ton or more—roamed the earth. These great beasts, or “megafauna,” lived on every habitable continent and on many islands. With a handful of exceptions, all are now gone. What caused the disappearance of these prehistoric behemoths? No one event can be pinpointed as a specific cause, but several factors may have played a role. Paleomammalogist Ross D. E. MacPhee explores them all, examining the leading extinction theories, weighing the evidence, and presenting his own conclusions. He shows how theories of human overhunting and catastrophic climate change fail to account for critical features of these extinctions, and how new thinking is needed to elucidate these mysterious losses. Along the way, we learn how time is determined in earth history; how DNA is used to explain the genomics and phylogenetic history of megafauna—and how synthetic biology and genetic engineering may be able to reintroduce these giants of the past. Until then, gorgeous four-color illustrations by Peter Schouten re-create these megabeasts here in vivid detail.

Author: Errol Fuller
Publisher: A&C Black
ISBN: 1408160013
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 257

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Book Description
Caught on camera prior to their demise, this book reveals the surprisingly rich photographic record of now-extinct animals. A photograph of an animal long-gone evokes a feeling of loss more than a painting ever can. Often tinted sepia or black-and-white, these images were mainly taken in zoos or wildlife parks, and in a handful of cases featured the last known individual of the species. There are some familiar examples, such as Martha, the last Passenger Pigeon, or the Ivory-billed Woodpecker, recently fledged and perching happily on the hat of one of the biologists that had just ringed it. But for every Martha there are a number of less familiar extinct birds and mammals that were caught on camera. The photographic record of extinction is the focus of this remarkable book, written by the world's leading authority on vanished animals, Errol Fuller. Lost Animals features photographs dating from around 1870 to as recently as 2004, the year that saw the demise of the Hawaiian Po'ouli. From a mother Thylacine and her pups to now-extinct birds such as the Heath Hen and Carolina Parakeet, Fuller tells the tale of each animal, why it became extinct, and discusses the circumstances surrounding the photography itself, in a book rich with unique images. The photographs themselves are poignant and compelling. They provide a tangible link to animals that have now vanished forever, in a book that brings the past to life while delivering a warning for the future.

Author: Stephen Cushman
Publisher: LSU Press
ISBN: 0807156914
Category : Poetry
Languages : en
Pages : 106

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Book Description
The "red list" of Stephen Cushman's new volume of poetry is the endangered species register, and the book begins and ends with the bald eagle, a bird that bounded back from the verge of extinction. The volume marks the inevitability of such changes, from danger to safety, from certainty to uncertainty, from joy to sadness and back again. In a single poem that advances through wordplay and association, Cushman meditates on subjects as vast as the earth's fragile ecosystem and as small as the poet's own deflated fantasy of self-importance: "There aren't any jobs for more Jeremiahs." Simultaneously teasing the present and eulogizing what has been lost, Cushman speaks like a Shakespearean jester, freely and foolishly, but with penetrating insight.

Author: Richard A. Fariña
Publisher: Indiana University Press
ISBN: 0253007194
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 458

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Book Description
“An enjoyable read that provides a substantial amount of detail on the biology, ecology, and distribution of these fantastic animals . . . Highly recommended.” —Choice More than 10,000 years ago spectacularly large mammals roamed the pampas and jungles of South America. This book tells the story of these great beasts during and just after the Pleistocene, the geological epoch marked by the great ice ages. Megafauna describes the history and way of life of these animals, their comings and goings, and what befell them at the beginning of the modern era and the arrival of humans. It places these giants within the context of the other mammals then alive, describing their paleobiology—how they walked; how much they weighed; their diets, behavior, biomechanics; and the interactions among them and with their environment. It also tells the stories of the scientists who contributed to our discovery and knowledge of these transcendent creatures and the environment they inhabited. The episode known as the Great American Biotic Interchange, perhaps the most important of all natural history “experiments,” is also an important theme of the book, tracing the biotic events of both North and South America that led to the fauna and the ecosystems discussed in this book. “Collectively, this book brings attention to the discovery and natural history of ancient beasts in South America while providing a broader temporal and geographic background that allows readers to understand their evolution and potential immigration to South America.” —Quarterly Review of Biology “An excellent volume . . . This book is likely to facilitate progress in the understanding of fossil mammals from the Americas.” —Priscum

Author: Terry Glavin
Publisher: Macmillan
ISBN: 1466873582
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 360

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Book Description
The Sixth Extinction is a haunting account of the age in which we live. Ecologists are calling it the Sixth Great Extinction, and the world isn't losing just its ecological legacy; also vanishing is a vast human legacy of languages and our ways of living, seeing, and knowing. Terry Glavin confirms that we are in the midst of a nearly unprecedented, catastrophic vanishing of animals, plants, and human cultures. He argues that the language of environmentalism is inadequate in describing the unraveling of the vast system in which all these extinctions are actually related. And he writes that we're no longer gaining knowledge with every generation. We're losing it. In the face of what he describes as a dark and gathering sameness upon the Earth, Glavin embarks on a global journey to meet the very things we're losing (a distinct species every ten minutes, a unique vegetable variety every six hours, an entire language every two weeks) and on the way encounters some of the world's wonderful, rare things: a human-sized salmon in Russia; a mysterious Sino-Tibetan song-language; a Malayan tiger, the last of its kind; and a strange tomato that tastes just like black cherry ice cream. And he finds hope in the most unlikely places---a macaw roost in Costa Rica; a small village in Ireland; a relic community of Norse whalers in the North Atlantic; the vault beneath the Royal Botanical Garden at Kew; and the throne room of the Angh of Longwa in the eastern Himalayas. A fresh narrative take on the usual doom and gloom environmentalism, The Sixth Extinction draws upon zoology, biology, ecology, anthropology, and mythology to share the joys hidden within the long human struggle to conserve the world's living things. Here, we find hope in what's left: the absolute and stunning beauty in the Earth's last cultures and creatures.

Author: P. B. Wignall
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691176027
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 219

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Book Description
260 million years ago, life on Earth suffered wave after wave of cataclysmic extinctions, with the worst--the end-Permian extinction--wiping out nearly every species on the planet. This book delves into the mystery behind these extinctions and sheds light on the fateful role the primeval supercontinent, known as Pangea, may have played in causing these global catastrophes. Drawing on the latest discoveries as well as his own field expeditions to remote corners of the world, Paul Wignall reveals what scientists are only now beginning to understand about the most prolonged period of environmental crisis in Earth's history. He describes how a series of unprecedented extinction events swept across the planet in a span of eighty million years, rapidly killing marine and terrestrial life on a scale more devastating than the dinosaur extinctions that would come later. Wignall shows how these extinctions--some of which have only recently been discovered--all coincided with gigantic volcanic eruptions of flood basalt lavas that occurred when the world's landmasses were united into a single vast expanse. Unraveling one of the great enigmas of ancient Earth, this book also explains how the splitting apart of Pangea into the continents we know today ushered in a new age of vibrant and more resilient life on our planet.--Adapted from book jacket.

Author: Eric Dinerstein
Publisher: Island Press
ISBN: 1610911962
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 311

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Book Description
This book explores that idea, building a narrative around the concept of rarity and its implications both for our understanding of how the natural world works, and for what it can teach us about protecting biodiversity during a time of large-scale environmental change.