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    Greenhouse of the Dinosaurs: Evolution, Extinction, and the Future of Our Planet
    Unavailable
    Greenhouse of the Dinosaurs: Evolution, Extinction, and the Future of Our Planet
    Unavailable
    Greenhouse of the Dinosaurs: Evolution, Extinction, and the Future of Our Planet
    Ebook460 pages5 hours

    Greenhouse of the Dinosaurs: Evolution, Extinction, and the Future of Our Planet

    By Donald R. Prothero

    5/5

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    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    Donald R. Prothero's science books combine leading research with first-person narratives of discovery, injecting warmth and familiarity into a profession that has much to offer nonspecialists. Bringing his trademark style and wit to an increasingly relevant subject of concern, Prothero links the climate changes that have occurred over the past 200 million years to their effects on plants and animals. In particular, he contrasts the extinctions that ended the Cretaceous period, which wiped out the dinosaurs, with those of the later Eocene and Oligocene epochs.

    Prothero begins with the "greenhouse of the dinosaurs," the global-warming episode that dominated the Age of Dinosaurs and the early Age of Mammals. He describes the remarkable creatures that once populated the earth and draws on his experiences collecting fossils in the Big Badlands of South Dakota to sketch their world. Prothero then discusses the growth of the first Antarctic glaciers, which marked the Eocene-Oligocene transition, and shares his own anecdotes of excavations and controversies among colleagues that have shaped our understanding of the contemporary and prehistoric world.

    The volume concludes with observations about Nisqually Glacier and other locations that show how global warming is happening much quicker than previously predicted, irrevocably changing the balance of the earth's thermostat. Engaging scientists and general readers alike, Greenhouse of the Dinosaurs connects events across thousands of millennia to make clear the human threat to natural climate change.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherColumbia University Press
    Release dateJun 1, 2009
    ISBN9780231518321
    Unavailable
    Greenhouse of the Dinosaurs: Evolution, Extinction, and the Future of Our Planet
    Author

    Donald R. Prothero

    Donald R. Prothero specializes in physics, planetary sciences, astronomy, earth sciences, and vertebrate paleontology. He has taught for more than thirty years at the college level, including at Columbia, Knox, Pierce, Vassar, and the California Institute of Technology. He has authored or edited more than three hundred scientific papers and thirty books, including Giants of the Lost World: Dinosaurs and Other Extinct Monsters of South America.

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    • 5/5
      Typical Prothero- very readable and detailed.