Beasts of Eden: Walking Whales, Dawn Horses, and Other Enigmas of Mammal EvolutionUniversity of California Press, 18 мая 2004 г. - Всего страниц: 368 Mammals first evolved at about the same time as dinosaurs, and their story is perhaps the more fascinating of the two—in part because it is also our own story. In this literate and entertaining book, eminent naturalist David Rains Wallace brings the saga of ancient mammals to a general audience for the first time. Using artist Rudolph Zallinger's majestic The Age of Mammals mural at the Peabody Museum as a frame for his narrative, Wallace deftly moves over varied terrain—drawing from history, science, evolutionary theory, and art history—to present a lively account of fossil discoveries and an overview of what those discoveries have revealed about early mammals and their evolution. In these pages we encounter towering mammoths, tiny horses, giant-clawed ground sloths, whales with legs, uintatheres, zhelestids, and other exotic extinct creatures as well as the scientists who discovered and wondered about their remains. We meet such memorable figures as Georges Cuvier, Richard Owen, Edward D. Cope, George Gaylord Simpson, and Stephen Jay Gould and learn of their heated disputes, from Cuvier's and Owen's fights with early evolutionists to present controversies over the Late Cretaceous mass extinction. Wallace's own lifelong interest in evolution is reflected in the book's evocative and engaging style and in the personal experiences he expertly weaves into the tale, providing an altogether expansive perspective on what Darwin described as the "grandeur" of evolution. |
Содержание
1 | |
Doctor Jekyll and the Stonesfield Jaws | 14 |
The Origin of Mammals | 25 |
The Noblest Conquest | 41 |
Terrible Horns and Heavy Feet | 54 |
Mr Megatherium versus Professor Mylodon | 70 |
Fire Beasts of the Antipodes | 79 |
Titans on Parade | 91 |
Shifting Ground | 157 |
Dissolving Ancestries | 166 |
Exploding Faunas | 176 |
The Revenge of the Shell Hunters | 188 |
Simpson Redivivus | 198 |
Wind Thieves of the Kyzylkum | 207 |
The Serpents Offering | 216 |
Anthropoid Leapfrog | 233 |
FiveToed Horses and Missing Links | 104 |
The Invisible Dawn Man | 115 |
A Bonaparte of Beasts | 123 |
Love and Theory | 135 |
Simpsons CynodonttoSmilodon Synthesis | 145 |
CENOZOIC PARKS | 249 |
NOTES | 261 |
SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY | 297 |
INDEX | 315 |
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Beasts of Eden: Walking Whales, Dawn Horses, and Other Enigmas of Mammal ... David Rains Wallace Ограниченный просмотр - 2004 |
Beasts of Eden: Walking Whales, Dawn Horses, and Other Enigmas of Mammal ... David Rains Wallace Ограниченный просмотр - 2004 |
Beasts of Eden: Walking Whales, Dawn Horses, and Other Enigmas of Mammal ... David Rains Wallace Ограниченный просмотр - 2004 |
Часто встречающиеся слова и выражения
adapiforms adaptation Africa Age of Mammals Age of Reptiles American Museum ancestors angiosperms animals anthropoid apes Asia badlands beasts bones carnivores Cenozoic cladistics Clemens continents Cope Cope's Coryphodon creatures Cuvier Darwin Dinocerata dinosaurs early mammal elephants Eobasileus Eocene Equus eutherians evidence evolutionary evolved expedition fauna Fayum fossil record fossils genera genus Geological giant Gould Granger gypsum herbivores horse Huxley ibid idea jaws Late Cretaceous Leidy living look mammalian mammals mammoth Marsh marsupials mass extinctions Matthew Megatherium mesonychid Mesonyx Mesozoic Mesozoic mammals million Miocene molars mural Museum of Natural named Natural History natural selection Naturalist Nessov North America O. C. Marsh Oligocene origins Osborn Owen Owen's Oxyaena Palaeotherium Paleocene paleontologists Patagonia Pelycodus placentals plants prehistoric primates prosimian Science scientific seemed Simpson skeleton skull sloth South species Stonesfield strata tarsiiform teeth Tertiary theory thought tion titanothere uintatheres ungulates vertebrate World Wortman wrote Yale Zallinger's The Age zhelestids
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Стр. 36 - These facts, as will be seen in the latter chapters of this volume, seemed to throw some light on the origin of species — that mystery of mysteries, as it has been called by one of our greatest philosophers.
Стр. 29 - You will at once perceive," continued Professor Ichthyosaurus, "that the skull before us belonged to some of the lower order of animals[:] the teeth are very insignificant [,] the power of the jaws trifling, and altogether it seems wonderful how the creature could have procured food.
Стр. 30 - NATURE, we learn from the past history of our globe that she has advanced with slow and stately steps, guided by the archetypal light amidst the wreck...
Стр. 51 - He then informed me that all this was new to him, and that my facts demonstrated the evolution of the horse beyond question, and for the first time indicated the direct line of descent of an existing animal.
Стр. 46 - Terres present the most striking contrast. From the uniform, monotonous, open prairie, the traveller suddenly descends one or two hundred feet, into a valley that looks as if it had sunk away from the surrounding world ; leaving standing, all over it, thousands of abrupt, irregular, prismatic, and columnar masses, frequently capped with irregular pyramids, and stretching up to a height of from one to two hundred feet, or more. So thickly are these natural towers studded...
Стр. 90 - ... on the yellow sand. I was halted by a kind of sacred horror. Novelty and the desert are so abhorred by man that I was glad one of the troglodytes had followed me to the last. I closed my eyes and awaited (without sleeping) the light of day. I have said that the City was founded on a stone plateau. This plateau, comparable to a high cliff, was no less arduous than the walls. In vain I fatigued myself: the black base did not disclose the slightest irregularity, the invariable walls seemed not to...
Стр. 36 - ... being occasionally hatched with a somewhat longer winglet, and a dwarfed stature ; on the probability of such a variety better adapting itself to the changing climate or other conditions than the old type — of such an origin of Alca...
Стр. 57 - There was a gradual increase in the size of the brain during this period, and...
Стр. 45 - But when I come to the propositions touching progressive modification, it appears to me, with the help of the new light which has broken from various quarters, that there is much ground for softening the somewhat Brutus-like severity with which, in 1862, I dealt with a doctrine, for the truth of which I should have been glad enough to be able to find a good foundation.
Стр. 48 - Professor of Zoology gravely inform his pupils that the horse was a gift of the Old World to the New, and was entirely unknown in America until introduced by the Spaniards. After the lecture I asked him whether no earlier remains of horses had been found on this continent, and was told in reply that the reports to that effect were too unsatisfactory to be presented as facts in science. This remark led me, on my return, to examine the subject myself...