| Author(s) | Ross D. E. MacPhee, Peter Schouten |
 | Year | 2019 |
 | Pages | 270 |
 | Language | English
|
 | Format | PDF |
 | Size | 62 MB
|
 | Publisher | W. W. Norton & Company |
 | ISBN | 978-0393249293, 0393249298 |
The fascinating lives and puzzling demise of some of the largest animals on earth.
Until
a few thousand years ago, creatures that could have been from a sci-fi
thriller—including gorilla-sized lemurs, 500-pound birds, and crocodiles
that weighed a ton or more—roamed the earth. These great beasts, or
“megafauna,” lived on every habitable continent and on many islands.
With a handful of exceptions, all are now gone.
What caused
the disappearance of these prehistoric behemoths? No one event can be
pinpointed as a specific cause, but several factors may have played a
role. Paleomammalogist Ross D. E. MacPhee explores them all, examining
the leading extinction theories, weighing the evidence, and presenting
his own conclusions. He shows how theories of human overhunting and
catastrophic climate change fail to account for critical features of
these extinctions, and how new thinking is needed to elucidate these
mysterious losses.
Along the way, we learn how time is
determined in earth history; how DNA is used to explain the genomics and
phylogenetic history of megafauna—and how synthetic biology and genetic
engineering may be able to reintroduce these giants of the past. Until
then, gorgeous four-color illustrations by Peter Schouten re-create
these megabeasts here in vivid detail.
