Anmerkungen:
In English
Mode of access: Internet via World Wide Web
Beschreibung:
Frontmatter -- Acknowledgments -- Contents -- Geologic Time Chart -- Prologue -- CHAPTER ONE. Extinctions Are for Real -- CHAPTER TWO. Santa Rosalia, or Why Are There So Many Kinds of Living Things? -- CHAPTER THREE. Biotic Armageddon: Dejd Vu Over and Over Again -- CHAPTER FOUR. Patterns and Clues in Paleozoic Mass Extinctions -- CHAPTER FIVE. Extinction, and the Rise and Vicissitudes cf Modern Life -- CHAPTER SIX. Without a Helping Hand: Causes of Mass Extinctions in the Geological Past -- CHAPTER SEVEN. The Ice Man Cometh: Climate Change, Human Action, and the Great Pleistocene Extinctions -- CHAPTER EIGHT. The Canary's Song: Land Use, Habitat Reduction, and Extinction -- Annotated Bibliography and Suggested Readings -- Index
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