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Overview
In Europe: A Natural History, world-renowned scientist, explorer, and conservationist Tim Flannery applies the eloquent interdisciplinary approach he used in his ecological histories of Australia and North America to the story of Europe. He begins 100 million years ago, when the continents of Asia, North America, and Africa interacted to create an island archipelago that would later become the Europe we know today. It was on these ancient tropical lands that the first distinctly European organisms evolved. Flannery teaches us about Europe’s midwife toad, which has endured since the continent’s beginning, while elephants, crocodiles, and giant sharks have come and gone. He explores the monumental changes wrought by the devastating comet strike and shows how rapid atmospheric shifts transformed the European archipelago into a single landmass during the Eocene.
As the story moves through millions of years of evolutionary history, Flannery eventually turns to our own species, describing the immense impact humans had on the continent’s flora and faunawithin 30,000 years of our arrival in Europe, the woolly rhino, the cave bear, and the giant elk, among others, would disappear completely. The story continues right up to the present, as Flannery describes Europe’s leading role in wildlife restoration, and then looks ahead to ponder the continent’s future: with advancements in gene editing technology, European scientists are working to recreate some of the continent’s lost creatures, such as the great ox of Europe’s primeval forests and even the woolly mammoth.
Written with Flannery’s characteristic combination of elegant prose and scientific expertise, Europe: A Natural History narrates the dramatic natural history and dynamic evolution of one of the most influential places on Earth.
Product Details
ISBN-13: | 9780802129161 |
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Publisher: | Grove/Atlantic, Inc. |
Publication date: | 02/12/2019 |
Pages: | 288 |
Product dimensions: | 5.90(w) x 9.10(h) x 1.40(d) |
About the Author
Table of Contents
Introduction 1
I The Tropical Archipelago
100-34 Million Years Ago
1 Destination Europe 9
2 Hateg's First Explorer 14
3 Dwarfish, Degenerate Dinosaurs 23
4 Islands at the Crossroads of the World 27
5 Origins and Ancient Europeans 31
6 The Midwife Toad 36
7 The Great Catastrophe 43
8 A Post-Apocalyptic World 48
9 New Dawn, New Invasions 54
10 Messel-a Window into the Past 62
11 The European Great Coral Reef 67
12 Tales from the Sewers of Paris 71
II Becoming Continental
34-2.6 Million Years Ago
13 La Grande Coupure 81
14 Cats, Birds and Olms 89
15 The Marvellous Miocene 94
16 A Miocene Bestiary 102
17 Europe's Extraordinary Apes 110
18 The First Upright Apes 114
19 Lakes and Islands 122
20 The Messinian Salinity Crisis 129
21 The Pliocene-Time of Laocoon 133
III Ice Ages
2.6 Million-38,000 Years Ago
22 The Pleistocene-Gateway to the Modern World 145
23 Hybrids-Europe, the Mother of Metissage 154
24 Return of the Upright Apes 162
25 Neanderthals 168
26 Bastards 178
27 The Cultural Revolution 184
28 Of Assemblages and Elephants 191
29 Other Temperate Giants 198
30 Ice Beasts 204
31 What the Ancestors Drew 213
IV Human Europe
38,000 Years Ago to the Future
32 The Balance Tips 225
33 The Domesticators 233
34 From the Horse to Roman Failure 239
35 Emptying the Islands 245
36 The Cairn and the Storm 251
37 Survivors 259
38 Europe's Global Expansion 267
39 New Europeans 272
40 Animals of Empire 277
41 Europe's Bewolfing 285
42 Europe's Silent Spring 293
43 Rewilding 298
44 Re-creating Giants 307
Envoi 315
Acknowledgments 317
Endnotes 319
Index 347