A Short History of Planet Earth: Mountains, Mammals, Fire, and Ice

by J. D. MacDougall

Overview

"A splendid introduction to geology and paleontology for the lay reader. To compress Earth's history into a single, lucidly written volume is a major achievement." —Publishers Weekly, starred review

"Few people have both the knowledge and the writing ability to capture such a long and varied history in a compelling manner. In A Short History of Planet Earth, J.D. Macdougal demonstrates that he is one of the few." —Earth

This exhilarating survey of the four and half billion years of Earth's history charts both the geological and biological history of the planet. It moves from the origin of the earth's iron core to the formation of today's seven continents, and from the primordial building blocks of life to the evolution of the human form.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780470341308
Publisher:	Trade Paper Press
Publication date:	05/02/2008
Series:	Wiley Popular Scienc
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	272
Sales rank:	937,874
File size:	5 MB

About the Author

J. D. MACDOUGALL is Director of the Program in Earth Sciences at the University of California, San Diego. He is the author of over one hundred articles in leading professional journals, including Scientific American, and has contributed to the McGraw-Hill Encyclopedia of Science and Technology.

Table of Contents

Reading the Rocks.

Early Days.

Wonderful Life.

The Proterozoic Eon.

Dance of the Plates.

Nature's Timepieces.

The Cambrian Explosion.

Fish, Forest, and Gondwanaland: The Paleozoic Era.

From Pangea to (Almost) the Modern World: The Mesozoic Era.

Global Catastrophes.

Mammals, Mountains, and Ice: The Cenozoic Era.

The Great Ice Age.

What Comes Next?: Geology and Man.

Glossary.

Further Reading.

Index.

Editorial Reviews

This survey of four-and-a-half billion years of Earth's past is a splendid introduction to geology and paleontology for the lay reader. MacDougall, a professor of earth science at the Scripps Oceanographic Institute (UC-San Diego), takes us step-by-step through the geologic time scale. Clues to the past lie in rocks, in oxygen isotopes and on the ocean floor. MacDougall traces the rise of continents and the origins of life in each era. He discusses tectonic plates, the major extinctions and their probable causes, climate and the Ice Ages, and he speculates on the future of our planet. To compress Earth's history into a single, lucidly written volume is a major achievement. Illustrations. (May)

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

Four and a half billion years of geologic history is a lot to condense, but McDougall's short history hits all the highlights. While much of the information offered here could be found in a good historical geology textbook such as Robert H. Dott and Donald R. Prothero's Evolution of the Earth (McGraw-Hill, 1994. 5th ed.), this is a good, popular treatment by a professor of earth science at the University of California's Scripps Oceanographic Institute, San Diego. McDougall focuses on how physical earth processes have operated over time. His coherent narrative does an excellent job of illustrating the relevance of geologic events and explaining the science behind them. It's a no-fuss outline of earth history that will give general readers or geology students a solid background for other reading in the earth sciences. For popular science collections.-Amy Brunvand, Univ. of Utah Lib., Salt Lake City

Library Journal

YAA short, succinct course in geology, ideal for first-year students or anyone else who has a lay interest in the subject. Full of charts, graphs, and illustrations, this excellent resource explains all of the elements needed for a fuller understanding of geology in a concise and understandable way. With its full index, this offering is a good supplemental text or research tool.

School Library Journal