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Author: Lydia Pyne Publisher: Penguin ISBN: 0143123424 Category : Science Languages : en Pages : 322
Book Description
An enthralling scientific and cultural exploration of the Ice Age—from the author of How the Canyon Became Grand From a remarkable father-daughter team comes a dramatic synthesis of science and environmental history—an exploration of the geologic time scale and evolution twinned with the story of how, eventually, we have come to understand our own past. The Pleistocene is the epoch of geologic time closest to our own. The Last Lost World is an inquiry into the conditions that made it, the themes that define it, and the creature that emerged dominant from it. At the same time, it tells the story of how we came to discover and understand this crucial period in the Earth’s history and what meanings it has for today.
Author: Lydia Pyne Publisher: Penguin ISBN: 0143123424 Category : Science Languages : en Pages : 322
Book Description
An enthralling scientific and cultural exploration of the Ice Age—from the author of How the Canyon Became Grand From a remarkable father-daughter team comes a dramatic synthesis of science and environmental history—an exploration of the geologic time scale and evolution twinned with the story of how, eventually, we have come to understand our own past. The Pleistocene is the epoch of geologic time closest to our own. The Last Lost World is an inquiry into the conditions that made it, the themes that define it, and the creature that emerged dominant from it. At the same time, it tells the story of how we came to discover and understand this crucial period in the Earth’s history and what meanings it has for today.
Author: Sharon Levy Publisher: Oxford University Press ISBN: 0199831548 Category : Science Languages : en Pages : 275
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
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: Richard A. Fariña Publisher: Indiana University Press ISBN: 0253007194 Category : Science Languages : en Pages : 458
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: Kelly E. Graf Publisher: ISBN: Category : History Languages : en Pages : 328
Book Description
Offers an updated perspective of human ecology and organization during the Pleistocene-Holocene transition in the Great Basin, 13,000-8,000 years ago, with special regard to whether these hunter-gatherers possessed a Paleoindian or Paleoarchaic lifeway.
Author: Rintaro Ono Publisher: BoD – Books on Demand ISBN: 1838803572 Category : Geology, Stratigraphic Languages : en Pages : 205
Book Description
This book presents an overview of recent research in the field of Pleistocene Archaeology around the world. The main topics of this book are: (1) human migrations, particularly by Homo sapiens who have migrated into most regions of the world and settled in different environments, (2) the development of human technology from early to archaic hominins and Homo sapiens, and (3) human adaptation to new environments and responses to environmental changes caused by climate changes during the Pleistocene. With such perspectives in mind, this book contains a total of nine insightful and stimulating chapters on these topics, in which human history during the time of the Pleistocene is reviewed and discussed.
Author: C. Britt Bousman Publisher: Texas A&M University Press ISBN: 1603447601 Category : Social Science Languages : en Pages : 346
Book Description
The end of the Pleistocene era brought dramatic environmental changes to small bands of humans living in North America: changes that affected subsistence, mobility, demography, technology, and social relations. The transition they made from Paleoindian (Pleistocene) to Archaic (Early Holocene) societies represents the first major cultural shift that took place solely in the Americas. This event—which manifested in ways and at times much more varied than often supposed—set the stage for the unique developments of behavioral complexity that distinguish later Native American prehistoric societies. Using localized studies and broad regional syntheses, the contributors to this volume demonstrate the diversity of adaptations to the dynamic and changing environmental and cultural landscapes that occurred between the Pleistocene and early portion of the Holocene. The authors' research areas range from Northern Mexico to Alaska and across the continent to the American Northeast, synthesizing the copious available evidence from well-known and recent excavations.With its methodologically and geographically diverse approach, From the Pleistocene to the Holocene: Human Organization and Cultural Transformations in Prehistoric North America provides an overview of the present state of knowledge regarding this crucial transformative period in Native North America. It offers a large-scale synthesis of human adaptation, reflects the range of ideas and concepts in current archaeological theoretical approaches, and acts as a springboard for future explanations and models of prehistoric change.
Author: Lydia Pyne
Author: Lydia Pyne
Author: United States. Federal Electronic Printing Committee
Author: Sharon Levy
Author: Ross D E MacPhee
Author: Richard A. Fariña
Author: Kelly E. Graf
Author: Richard D. Hoare
Author: Rintaro Ono
Author: C. Britt Bousman
Author: Henry Fairfield Osborn