A New History of Life (60 page)
Read A New History of Life Online
Authors: Peter Ward
9.
P. Mellars, “Why Did Modern Human Populations Disperse from Africa ca. 60,000 Years Ago?”
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
103, no. 25 (2006): 9381–86.
10.
P. Ward,
The Call of Distant Mammoths: What Killed the Ice Age Mammals
(Copernicus, Springer-Verlag, 1997).
Peter Ward, Ph.D., is a professor of biology and a professor of Earth and space sciences, and has been active in paleontology, biology, and astrobiology for more than thirty-five years. He teaches at the Sprigg Geobiology Centre at the University of Adelaide in Australia and at the University of Washington in Seattle. He has written seventeen books and appeared in numerous television documentaries, including the three-part
Dinosaur
series for WHYY;
The End of Evolution
(based on his book, for Discovery Channel Canada);
The Shape of Life, The State of the World
(David Attenborough and the BBC), and the WGBH
Evolution
series through NOVA. His series, the eight-hour
Animal Armageddon
funded by Animal Planet Network, was televised in 2009.
Joe Kirschvink, Ph.D., is the Nico and Marilyn Van Wingen professor of geobiology at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, California, and an external Principal Investigator at the Earth-Life Science Institute of the Tokyo Institute of Technology in Meguro, Japan. He has challenged conventional wisdom about our planet in a number of ways, including his claim that the entire Earth once resembled a giant snowball, causing a crisis for biology that stimulated biodiversity, and the theory that the Earth experienced a period of true polar wander, rotating about the equator, which led to the Cambrian explosion. Kirschvink is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Geophysical Union, the Japanese Geoscience Union, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Asteroid 27711 is named after him.
Bloomsbury Press
An imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
1385 Broadway 50 Bedford Square
New York London
NY 10018 WC1B 3DP
USA UK
BLOOMSBURY and the Diana logo are trademarks of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
First published 2015
This electronic edition published April 2015
© Peter Ward and Joe Kirschvink 2015
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers.
No responsibility for loss caused to any individual or organization acting on or refraining from action as a result of the material in this publication can be accepted by Bloomsbury or the author.
ISBN: HB: 978-1-60819-907-5
ePub: 978-1-60819-908-2
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
Ward, Peter D. (Peter Douglas), 1949–
A new history of life : the radical new discoveries about the origins and evolution of life on earth / Peter Ward & Joe Kirschvink.
pages cm
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-60819-907-5 (hardcover) 978-1-60819-908-2 (ebook)
1. Evolution (Biology) 2. Life—Origin. I. Kirschvink, Joseph L. II. Title.
QH366.2.W373 2015
576.8’2—dc23
To find out more about our authors and books visit
www.bloomsbury.com
. Here you will find extracts, author interviews, details of forthcoming events and the option to sign up for our
newsletters
.
Rare Earth: Why Complex Life Is Uncommon in the Universe
(with Donald Brownlee)
The Life and Death of Planet Earth
(with Donald Brownlee)
Gorgon: Paleontology, Obsession, and the Greatest Catastrophe in Earth’s History
Life as We Do Not Know It: The NASA Search for (and Synthesis of) Alien Life
Out of Thin Air: Dinosaurs, Birds, and Earth’s Ancient Atmosphere
Under a Green Sky: Global Warming, the Mass Extinctions of the Past, and What They Can Tell Us About Our Future
The Medea Hypothesis: Is Life on Earth Ultimately Self-Destructive?
The Flooded Earth: Our Future in a World Without Ice Caps