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Bookmark-- BioscienceSeveral times in the distant past, catastrophic extinctions have swept the Earth, causing more than half of all species -- from single-celled organisms to awe-inspiring behemoths -- to suddenly vanish and be replaced by new life forms.
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Today the rich diversity of life on the Earth is again in grave danger -- and the cause is not a sudden cataclysmic event but rather humankind's devastation of the environment.
Is life on our planet teetering on the brink of another mass extinction? In this absorbing new book, acclaimed paleontologist Peter D.
Ward answers this daunting question with a resounding yes.
Elaborating on and updating Ward's previous work, The End of Evolution, Rivers in Time delves into his newest discoveries.
The book presents the gripping tale of the author's investigations into the history of life and death on Earth through a series of expeditions that have brought him ever closer to the truth about mass extinctions, past and future.
First describing the three previous mass extinctions -- those marking the transition from the Permian to the Triassic periods 245 million years ago, the Triassic to the Jurassic 200 million years ago, and the Cretaceous to the Tertiary 65 million years ago -- Ward assesses the present devastation in which countless species are coming to the end of their evolution at the hand of that wandering, potentially destructive force called Homo sapiens.The book takes readers to the Philippine Sea, now eerily empty of life, where only a few decades of catching fish by using dynamite have resulted in eviscerated coral reefs -- and a dramatic reduction in the marine life the region can support.
For more information about the title Rivers in Time, read the full description at Amazon.com, or see the following related books:
Catastrophes and Lesser Calamities: The Causes of Mass Extinctions — This is a book about the dramatic periods in the Earth's history called mass extinctions - short periods (by geological standards) when life nearly ... > read more
Future Evolution — Everyone wonders what tomorrow holds, but what will the real future look like? Not decades or even hundreds of years from now, but thousands or ... > read more
Under a Green Sky: Global Warming, the Mass Extinctions of the Past, and What They Can Tell Us About Our Future — University of Washington paleontologist Peter D. Ward demonstrates in UNDER A GREEN SKY that the ancient past is not just of academic concern. ... > read more
When Life Nearly Died: The Greatest Mass Extinction of All Time — "The focus is the most severe mass extinction known in earth's history….The science on which the book is based is up-to-date, thorough, and ... > read more
