Terra: Our 100-Million-Year-Old Ecosystem--and the Threats That Now Put It at Risk

Terra: Our 100-Million-Year-Old Ecosystem--and the Threats That Now Put It at Risk | Michael Novacek | Accessible and serious

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Terra: Our 100-Mil...

	Terra: Our 100-Million-Year-Old Ecosystem--and the Threats That Now Put It at Risk Michael Novacek Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2007 - 480 pages average customer review:based on 5 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

A paleontologist awakens us to the "extinction event" that human activity is bringing about today 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 Terra, a brilliant synthesis of evolutionary biology, paleontology, and modern environmental science, Michael Novacek shows how all three can help us understand and prevent what he (and others) call today?s ?mass extinction event.? Humanity?s use of land, our consumption, the pollution we create, and our contributions to global warming are causing this crisis. True, the fossil record of hundreds of millions of years reveals that wild and bounteous nature has always evolved not quietly but thunderously, as species arise, flourish, die off, and are replaced by new species. We learn from paleontology and archaeology that for 50,000 years, human hunting, mining, and agriculture have changed many localities, sometimes irrevocably. But today, Novacek insists, our behavior endangers the entire global ecosystem. And if we disregard?through ignorance, antipathy, or apathy?the theory of evolution that developed with our modern understanding of the Earth?s past, we not only impede enlightenment but threaten any practical strategy for our own survival. The evolutionary future of the entire living planet depends on our understanding this.

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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.

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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.

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100 million years of evolutionary ecology clearly explained

Terra is an excellent book, very clearly written and engaging, outlining the evolution of the world's ecosystems from the earliest roots since life on land first began to the threats it is experiencing in the Anthropocene (recent human) era. The author spices the text with personal stories from his far-flung travels doing research in Africa, Vietnam and even Antartica. Appreciating the background of deep time and the lessons that can be learned from previous environmental catastrophes and climate changes allows a much deeper understanding of the critical issues facing humanity today. Strongly recommended!!

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A good read

I found this book to be well written, informative and an easy read. While I don't necessarily agree with some of the conclusions, I found a number of interesting advances in science that added to my personal body of knowledge in very positive ways.

Return to Science Class

Terra is like returning to high school science class, but this time you have an intersting teacher and are paying attention. The author catches the reader up on some science basics (taxonomy classifications, etc.) and provides some interesting facts (didn't know there were so many worms in the world). Then, with many alarming statistics the author presents the case that we humans are changing the planet (not breaking news). However, the human species was not going to live forever anyway (no species ever does) so we either stop killing ourselves, or die off (and the world will not mourn our passing too much).

I would guess that the author is a pop-star of the palentology world, taking complex topics and making them interesting enough for the non-scientist to stomach. This is a real skill. Other than bogging down to tell us what he ate in Vietnam one time, the author has a talent for keeping the topic interesting, at least in 30 page increments.

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