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Terra: Our 100-Million-Year-Old Ecosystem--and the Threats That Now Put It at Risk
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Product Description
“Terra is one of the important books of our time—and it will change the way you think about the world.” —Neil Shubin, Provost, Field Museum of Natural History
The natural world as humans have always known it evolved close to 100 million years ago with the appearance of flowering plants and pollinating insects during the age of the dinosaurs. Its tremendous history is now in danger of profound, catastrophic disruption. In this brilliant synthesis of evolutionary biology, paleontology, and modern environmental science, Michael Novacek shows how we can understand and prevent what he and others call today’s “mass extinction event.”
Product Details
- Amazon Sales Rank: #495898 in Books
- Published on: 2008-11-11
- Released on: 2008-11-11
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Binding: Paperback
- 480 pages
Features
- ISBN13: 9780374531416
- Condition: NEW
- Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
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Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
Paleontologist Novacek (Time Traveler) tells the story of our ecosystem and warns that humans are transforming it so drastically that it may not be habitable in the future. Discussing the evolutionary processes that led to the diversification of all life, he asserts that people who reject the theory of evolution impede efforts to preserve the ecosystem because they ignore the importance of biological diversity. To demonstrate biodiversity's crucial role, he considers the evolution of flowering plants and the myriad insect species that pollinate them, stressing that as we decimate these insect populations, we interfere with the very core of what has been built by evolution. Extinction is normal during the course of evolution, but studies cited by the author show that every year tens of thousands of species may now be going extinct, thousands of times faster than they would naturally do so, as humans exploit the ecosystem by cutting forests, exhausting sources of fresh water, polluting the air, destroying habitats, depleting the ocean and introducing invasive species to new habitats. We can avoid this, Novacek contends, if we learn to appreciate the history of our ecosystem in all its beauty and complexity, and have the will to reverse our destructive course. His timely book, with its wealth of lucidly presented information, should go a long way toward promoting this appreciation. (Nov.)
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Review
"This is a great read. Michael Novacek’s book vividly portrays the human folly and cavalier disregard for Terra, our only home, and he puts the environmental crisis in its most profound context. This is a masterful hundred-million-year biography of our unique planet of life—how it came to be, how it works." —Thomas Lovejoy, President, The Heinz Center for Science, Economics and the Environment
Terra is a much needed book on the human condition that could have been written only by a paleontologist with a thorough, field-based knowledge of evolutionary and environmental biology. Starting with the birth of Earth’s modern ecosystems, in the Age of Dinosaurs, Novacek explains how the living environment came together in a way that yielded humanity, and why our careless destruction of it is a profound and eternal loss. —Edward O. Wilson, Harvard University
"Terra is one of the important books of our time—and it will change the way you think about the world around you. Novacek’s coup is that he not only brings the past to life but shows how it holds the keys to our future. The extraordinary breadth of his accomplishments as a scientist gives his book a powerful combination of authority, wit, and humanity. Reading Terra, it is hard not to feel humbled being a steward of a planet so ancient, wondrous, and fragile as our own." —Neil Shubin, Provost, Field Museum of Natural History, Chicago
About the Author
Michael Novacek, Senior Vice President and Provost of Science at the American Museum of Natural History, is the author of Time Traveler (FSG, 2002) and Dinosaurs of the Flaming Cliffs (1996). He lives in New York City.
Customer Reviews
Accessible and serious
The book is readily accessible to the non-scientist and offers many insights into the complexities of the evolution of our ecosystem. It is full of fascinating detail always tied into a broad overall picture. Darwin's theory of evolution is seen as essential to our understanding of our past and of the dangers which now confront us. (Novacek was involved in the splendid Darwin exhibition put together by the American Museum of Natural History which I was fortunate to be able to see when it was recently brought to the Auckland Museum here in New Zealand.)
Novacek writes very well. In style his book is a happy combination of relaxed, sometimes personal, narrative and authoritative general overview.
Although a pleasant and interesting read Terra carries the deeply serious message that we are on the verge of a species extinction of massive proportions and that we must (and hopefully can) take the necessary steps to avert catastrophic climate change.
As a general reader interested in Darwinian evolution and deeply concerned at the dangers posed by anthropogenic global warming I found myself deeply engaged by this book.
The Fascinating Panorama of Earth's History
Despite some views to the contrary, our planet is quite old- over 4.5 billion years have passed since the formation of Earth and the other planets revolving around our sun. How we know this is a remarkable and complex story. The history that followed the formation is an even more complex tale, one that has been the topic of many books. The most recent of these is "Terra" by Michael Novacek, a paleontologist and currently Senior Vice President and Provost of Science at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. Novacek is a very good writer and in his book he explores the issues of how we know the age of the earth, how we know what life forms were living during a given period of time, and what we know about the geological and cosmic events that led to the present day world that we live in. It is a riveting tale indeed!
The time from the formation of the earth to the first living things (bacteria) was about 1 billion years. From that point it was nearly 3 billion years before the Cambrian "explosion." At that point, over 500 million years ago, life becomes very evident because of the hard parts that had evolved and allowed easy fossilization. Thus much of the history of the planet life consisted of an ever expanding plethora of bacterial species, the diversity of which we are just beginning to fathom. Because of the easier (but not easy) to read fossil record after the Cambrian, scientists are able to piece together more data on Earth's magnetic field changes, climate changes, continental movements, oxygen and carbon dioxide levels and catastrophic events, such as asteroid strikes, that led to major extinctions. These include the mega-extinctions at the ends of the Permian (not explained yet) and the Cretaceous (at least likely to have been caused by an asteroid strike.)
Finally Novacek comes to grip with the unsettling changes in Earth's climate since the start of the Industrial Revolution. These changes (the increase of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gasses and the resulting rise in temperature) have potential to cause major disruptions in civilization. These and related changes are to a large degree the result of population growth, associated pollution, habitat destruction and the man-induced extinction of species. Novacek is optimistic, but cautiously so. Indeed, I think that despair and blind optimism are not real options, although both have been voiced by various writers. We may well have lost, but we gain nothing from surrender at this point and we may yet turn the problem around to at least an acceptable (probably not optimal) result.
I recommend this book highly. It is the most up to date of those I have read and while I don't agree with everything and have found a few apparent errors in details, I think Novacek has explored the science in a depth seldom reached. Let us hope that his cautious optimism is well founded! After over 4.5 billion years it would be a piety to drop the ball now.
Extraordinary
I have read many science books, particularly in the area of biology, and cannot recall having read any biological work as good as Terra. But I am an old man and perhaps have forgotten.
It is true that the book is not particularly easy to read, but only because the author has diligently tried to compress a lot of information into it. My feeling is that since he has taken so much trouble to write this magnificent work, he is entitled to have me take a fair bit of trouble to read it. It must surely be at least one of the best books ever written for non-specialists on the history of life on Earth.
Any person who is an evolutionist -- and there are supposed to be many -- would find it a challenge to read the work and adhere to his or her former views.
Novacek, though he says little about himself, must be a very fine fellow. His enthusiasm for the histories of species gone millions of years ago is infectious. And of course, what he has to say is relevant to the here and now; it makes one takes seriously the possibility that we attach too much importance to our human squabbles and prejudices, when our species itself may turn out to be simply a relatively short phase in the life of the Earth.
INVICTUS
