Niles Eldredge

The Miner's Canary (eBook, PDF)

Unraveling the Mysteries of Extinction

• Format: PDF

Produktbeschreibung

Like the bird whose death signaled dangerous conditions in a mine, the demise of animals that once flourished should give humans pause. How is our fate linked to the earth's creatures, and the cycle of flourishing and extinction? Which are the simple workings of nature's order, and which are omens of ecological disaster? Does human activity accelerate extinction? What really causes it? In an illuminating and elegantly written account of the widespread reduction of the world's wildlife, renowned paleontologist Niles Eldredge poses these questions and examines humankind's role in the larger life cycles of the earth, composing a provocative general theory of extinction.

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Produktdetails

• Verlag: Verso
• Erscheinungstermin: 8. Februar 2022
• Englisch
• ISBN-13: 9780691241845
• Artikelnr.: 63083262

Autorenporträt

Niles Eldredge is the Curator of the Department of Invertebrates at the American Museum of Natural History.

Inhaltsangabe

Geologic Time Chart
Prologue
Ch. 1
Extinctions Are for Real
1
Ch. 2
Santa Rosalia, or Why Are There So Many Kinds of Living Things?
21
Ch. 3
Biotic Armageddon: Deja Vu Over and Over Again
49
Ch. 4
Patterns and Clues in Paleozoic Mass Extinctions
79
Ch. 5
Extinction, and the Rise and Vicissitudes of Modern Life
99
Ch. 6
Without a Helping Hand: Causes of Mass Extinctions in the Geological
Past
131
Ch. 7
The Ice Man Cometh: Climate Change, Human Action, and the Great
Pleistocene Extinctions
171
Ch. 8
The Canary's Song: Land Use, Habitat Reduction, and Extinction
209
Annotated Bibliography and Suggested Readings
231
Index
237

Rezensionen

It is clear that we are witnessing a mass extinction that is almost entirely the result of human activities. Eldredge is surely right that this is largely the consequence of habitat destruction rather than direct slaughter, but the consequences are nonetheless dire for our own species as well as others.