Order from a Major Online Bookstore
Ultimate Book Price Comparison Engine
Save Your Time And Money
| AnyBook4Less.com | Order from a Major Online Bookstore |
|
| Home | Store List | FAQ | Contact Us | | ||
| Ultimate Book Price Comparison Engine Save Your Time And Money |
||
 |
Title: Extinction: Bad Genes or Bad Luck? by David M. Raup ISBN: 0-393-30927-4 Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company Pub. Date: 01 November, 1992 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $13.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.22 (9 reviews)
Rating: 3
Summary: Assignment
Comment: I don't think I would recommend this book to the average person. If someone was curious about extinction and different theories then they might like this book. I was hoping it would be more about extinction and dinosaurs. Anyway the author did a good job explaining his thoughts on extinction. It was interesting seeing how the author kind of explained how extinction could be as simple as bad luck, a species just being in the wrong place at the wrong time. A lot of the points are expressed well and some of the information was interesting but it still wasn't my type of book.
Rating: 4
Summary: Forgot to mention this in my previous review
Comment: I forgot to mention this in my previous review.
In addition to Raup's idea that meteors account for periodic die-offs, his idea is interesting for another reason.
Back in the early 19th century, when geology and paleontology were becoming sciences, it used to be thought that sudden, catastrophic changes in the earth's geology were the main mechanisms by which the earth's surface was changed over time and transformed.
For example, there were the Vulcanists (no, they are not from Star Trek) who believed that diastrophic processes (i.e., vulcanism and other heat-generated processes) were responsible for transforming the earth's surface and atmosphere in geologic times.
Then there were the Neptunists, who held that great floods had transformed the earth's surface (such as in the case of the Noachian Deluge, in the Bible).
Then in the mid-1800's came Charles Lyell (who was also Darwin's geology professor), who documented gradual changes, such as those occurring as a result of erosion. Lyell's ideas become known as Uniformitarianism, which contrasted with the earlier theories of Catastrophism, of which Vulcanism and Neptunism are examples.
So Raup's idea is essentially a return to an earlier form of geological explanation, in that it lands him back in the Catastrophism camp.
Rating: 5
Summary: highly readable and informative book on extinction
Comment: David M. Raup does an extraordinary job in this fine work on the mysteries of extinction. Addressing not only the infamous K-T extinction event that wiped out the dinosaurs, pterosaurs, prehistoric marine reptiles, ammonites, and many less well known organims of the Mesozoic, he addresses other significant extinction events in earth's history, ranging from the Cambrian period all the way up to extinctions in recent centuries, such as the heath hen in the eastern United States. Raup is able to draw many interesting theories and conclusions by analyzing extinction as an event and process seperate from and beyond the details of the individual organisms. Too many works, at least popular works, dwell overmuch on the extinction of the dinosaurs and related archosaur fauna (and to a lesser extent the mammalian and avian megafauna at the end of the Pleistocene)and fail to draw overall conclusions about what extinction is, how it comes about, and what roles it plays in the history of life on earth. Though the details of particular organims that become extinct are important, Raup seeks to draw broader and more widely applicable conclusions, and in this he succeeds brilliantly.
Raup analyzes and addresses a variety of potential causes of extinction from biological (such as predation, epidemic disease, etc.) to physical (sea level rises and falls, volcanism, etc.) to fairly exotic (cosmic radiation, asteroid impact, etc.), as well of course interactions between various causes. He also discusses the importance of small population sizes playing a role in and of themselves in a species extinction, how small populations (using the heath hen as an example) are uniquely vulnerable to such factors as demographic stochasticity, extrinsic forces, social dysfunction, and so forth, all described in informative but very readable format. The debate over the role of small population size is particularly interesting in discussions of potential modern day extinctions, a probelm faced by modern day conservationists and environmentalists.
Weaving in discussions of probability, statistics, geology, astronomy, climate, and the overall history of life on earth, Raup does an excellent job on the subject of extinction. Any amateur paleontologist or indeed biologist, as well as those involved in conservation efforts, would be well served by this book.
 |
Title: The Nemesis Affair: A Story of the Death of Dinosaurs and the Ways of Science by David M. Raup, David Raup ISBN: 0393319180 Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company Pub. Date: 01 November, 1999 List Price(USD): $13.00 |
 |
Title: Night Comes to the Cretaceous: Comets, Craters, Controversy, and the Last Days of the Dinosaurs by James Lawrence Powell ISBN: 0156007037 Publisher: Harvest Books Pub. Date: 23 September, 1999 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
 |
Title: Darwin's Dreampond: Drama on Lake Victoria by Tijs Goldschmidt ISBN: 0262571218 Publisher: MIT Press Pub. Date: 06 February, 1998 List Price(USD): $18.95 |
 |
Title: Wonderful Life: The Burgess Shale and the Nature of History by Stephen Jay Gould ISBN: 039330700X Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company Pub. Date: 01 September, 1990 List Price(USD): $15.95 |
 |
Title: At Home in the Universe: The Search for Laws of Self-Organization and Complexity by Stuart Kauffman ISBN: 0195111303 Publisher: Oxford University Press Pub. Date: 01 October, 1996 List Price(USD): $18.95 |
Thank you for visiting www.AnyBook4Less.com and enjoy your savings!
Copyright� 2001-2021 Send your comments
