Douglas H. Erwin's Books

The Great Paleozoic Crisis

Life and Death in the Permian

By: Douglas H. Erwin

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The Great Paleozoic Crisis

Life and Death in the Permian

By: Douglas H. Erwin

The culmination of more than fifty years of research by the foremost living expert on plant classification, Diversity and Classification of Flowering Plants is an important contribution to the field of plant taxonomy. In the last decade, the system of classifying plants has been thoroughly revised. Instead of describing every individual family, Takhtajan includes descriptions in keys to families, which he calls "descriptive keys." The advantage of descriptive keys is that they give both the characteristic features of the families and their differences. The delimitation of families and orders drastically differs from the one accepted by the Englerian school and from the one accepted in Arthur Cronquist's system. Takhtajan favors the smaller, more natural families and orders, which are more coherent and better-defined, where characters are easily grasped, and which are more suitable for information retrieval and phylogenetic studies, including cladistic analysis (because it reduces polymorphic codings).

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Page Count

342

Publisher

Columbia University Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0231074662

ISBN 13

9780231074667

Extinction

How Life on Earth Nearly Ended 250 Million Years Ago - Updated Edition

By: Douglas H. Erwin

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Extinction

How Life on Earth Nearly Ended 250 Million Years Ago - Updated Edition

By: Douglas H. Erwin

Some 250 million years ago, the earth suffered the greatest biological crisis in its history. Around 95 percent of all living species died out—a global catastrophe far greater than the dinosaurs' demise 185 million years later. How this happened remains a mystery. But there are many competing theories. Some blame huge volcanic eruptions that covered an area as large as the continental United States; others argue for sudden changes in ocean levels and chemistry, including burps of methane gas; and still others cite the impact of an extraterrestrial object, similar to what caused the dinosaurs' extinction. Extinction is a paleontological mystery story. Here, the world's foremost authority on the subject provides a fascinating overview of the evidence for and against a whole host of hypotheses concerning this cataclysmic event that unfolded at the end of the Permian. After setting the scene, Erwin introduces the suite of possible perpetrators and the types of evidence paleontologists seek. He then unveils the actual evidence--moving from China, where much of the best evidence is found; to a look at extinction in the oceans; to the extraordinary fossil animals of the Karoo Desert of South Africa. Erwin reviews the evidence for each of the hypotheses before presenting his own view of what happened. Although full recovery took tens of millions of years, this most massive of mass extinctions was a powerful creative force, setting the stage for the development of the world as we know it today. In a new preface, Douglas Erwin assesses developments in the field since the book's initial publication.

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Page Count

314

Publisher

Princeton University Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0691165653

ISBN 13

9780691165653

Extinction

How Life on Earth Nearly Ended 250 Million Years Ago - Updated Edition

By: Douglas H. Erwin

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Extinction

How Life on Earth Nearly Ended 250 Million Years Ago - Updated Edition

By: Douglas H. Erwin

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314

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Princeton University Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0691165653

ISBN 13

9780691165653

The Fossils of the Burgess Shale

By: D. E. G. Briggs,Douglas H. Erwin,Frederick Joseph Collier

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The Fossils of the Burgess Shale

By: D. E. G. Briggs,Douglas H. Erwin,Frederick Joseph Collier

Since its discovery in 1909 by Charles Doolittle Walcott, then Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, the Burgess Shale in the Canadian Rocky Mountains has fascinated both scientists and the public with its plethora of weird wonders - life forms of the past so unfamiliar they cannot easily be assigned to known taxonomic groups. This century's most significant invertebrate fossil discovery, the Burgess Shale provides an unprecedented window into the explosive evolution during the Cambrian period that began about 540 million years ago, one of the most enigmatic episodes in the history of life. This book provides the first comprehensive set of illustrations of the extraordinary life forms revealed in the Burgess Shale. In addition to the more common fossilized hard skeletons, the Burgess Shale preserved the soft parts of these organisms, which provide a key to understanding the early evolution of the major groups of animals that inhabit the earth today. The Fossils of the Burgess Shale shows much remarkable detail - including digestive tracts and other internal organs - of creatures preserved in particles of mud fine enough to penetrate every crack and unevenness. The book begins with the history of exploration and research in the Burgess Shale, the geologic setting and preservation of the fossils, and a discussion of the Cambrian radiation, the period when almost all the major phyla of animals evolved. These introductory chapters are followed by 199 high-quality photographs and line drawings with detailed species accounts that describe important features of each specimen, as well as the ecology and taxonomy of each group. A complete list of all currently accepted species described from the Burgess Shale and a comprehensive bibliography follow the illustrations. The Fossil of the Burgess Shale is a compendium of fascinating Cambrian treasures that offer a rare glimpse into the nature of early life on our planet. They have figured prominently in recent evolutionary debates. The National Museum of Natural History, which houses more than 65,000 fossils collected by Walcott from the Burgess Shale, will open a new exhibition of the specimens in 1995.

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Page Count

258

Published Date

ISBN 10

1560983647

ISBN 13

9781560983644

Douglas of the Forests

The North American Journals of David Douglas

By: David Douglas,John Davies

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Douglas of the Forests

The North American Journals of David Douglas

By: David Douglas,John Davies

Journal of Douglas's second botanical expedition to the Pacific Northwest from 1824-1827.

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Page Count

188

Publisher

Seattle : University of Washington Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0295957077

ISBN 13

9780295957074

Book's by Douglas H. Erwin

The Great Paleozoic Crisis

The Great Paleozoic Crisis

Extinction

Extinction

Extinction

Extinction

The Fossils of the Burgess Shale

The Fossils of the Burgess Shale

Douglas of the Forests

Douglas of the Forests

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