Islands in the Cosmos

by Russell, Dale A.

• ISBN13: 9780253352736
• ISBN10: 0253352738
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2009-06-23
• Publisher: Indiana Univ Pr

Summary

How is it that we came to be here? The search for answers to that question has preoccupied humans for millennia. Scientists have sought clues in the genes of living things, in the physical environments of Earth from mountaintops to the depths of the ocean, in the chemistry of this world and those nearby, in the tiniest particles of matter, and in the deepest reaches of space. In Islands of the Cosmos, Dale A. Russell traces a path from the dawn of the universe to speculations about our future on this planet. He centers his story on the physical and biological processes in evolution, which interact to favor more successful, and eliminate less successful, forms of life. Marvelously, these processes reveal latent possibilities in life's basic structure, and propel a major evolutionary theme: the increasing proficiency of biological function. It remains to be seen whether the human form can survive the dynamic processes that brought it into existence. Yet the emergence of the ability to acquire knowledge from experience, to optimize behavior, to conceptualize, to distinguish "good" from "bad" behavior all hint at an evolutionary outcome that science is only beginning to understand.

Author Biography

Dale A. Russell is senior curator of paleontology at the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences and author of A Vanished World: The Dinosaurs of Western Canada and An Odyssey in Time: The Dinosaurs of North America.

Table of Contents

Foreword

Preface

Acknowledgments

Time Travel

The Extraterrestrial Pre-Hadean

The Hadean Eon

The Archean Eon

The Proterozoic Eon

Phanerozoic Marine Life

Origin of Complex Terrestrial Ecosystems

Toward the Coal Age

Ascendancy of Life on Land

Bridging the Eras

The Natural History of Natural Selection

An Age of Giants

One Earth, Two Worlds

The Modern Earth

Synthesis

Epilogue

References

Index

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