The Universe Within (32 page)

The other mass extinctions in the fossil record do not appear to be caused by impacts. For detailed discussion of these other events, see Michael J. Benton,
When Life Nearly Died: The Greatest Mass Extinction of All Time
(New York: Thames & Hudson, 2003); Douglas H. Erwin,
Extinction: How Life on Earth Nearly Ended 250 Million Years Ago
(Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2008); George R. McGhee,
The Late Devonian Mass Extinction
(New York: Columbia University Press, 1996); David M. Raup,
The Nemesis Affair: A Story of the Death of Dinosaurs and the Ways of Science
(New York: Norton, 1999); and Peter D. Ward,
Rivers in Time
(New York: Columbia University Press, 2002).

The meeting at
Woods Hole, along with the interactions of
Schopf, Raup, Gould, and
Sepkoski, is in Sepkoski and Ruse,
Paleobiological Revolution
.

Sepkoski’s database is J. John Sepkoski Jr.,
A Compendium of Fossil Marine Animal Genera
, Bulletins of American Paleontology, 364 (Ithaca, N.Y.: Paleontological Research Institution, 2002),
http://strata.geology.wisc.edu/​jack/
.

His database revealed major patterns in the history of life in the oceans. These insights are detailed in J. J. Sepkoski Jr., “Patterns of Phanerozoic Extinction: A Perspective from Global Data Bases,” in
Global Events and Event Stratigraphy
, ed. O. H. Walliser (Berlin: Springer, 1996), 35–51; D. M. Raup and J. J. Sepkoski Jr., “Mass Extinctions in the Marine Fossil Record,”
Science
215 (1995): 1501–3; D. M. Raup and J. J. Sepkoski Jr., “Periodicity of Extinctions in the Geologic Past,”
PNAS
81 (1984): 801–5.

The work of
David Jablonski was the subject of a wonderful piece by David Quammen, “The Weeds Shall Inherit the Earth,”
Independent
(London), November 22, 1998, 30–39. Original papers of Jablonski’s used in this chapter include D. Jablonski, “Heritability at the Species Level: Analysis of Geographic Ranges of Cretaceous Mollusks,”
Science
238 (1987): 360–63; D. Jablonski and G. Hunt, “Larval Ecology, Geographic Range, and Species
Survivorship in
Cretaceous Mollusks: Organismic vs. Species-Level Explanations,”
American Naturalist
168 (2006): 556–64; D. Jablonski,
“Extinction and the Spatial Dynamics of Biodiversity,”
PNAS
105, no. S1 (2008): 11528–35; and D. Jablonski, “Lessons from the Past: Evolutionary Impacts of Mass
Extinctions,”
PNAS
98 (2001): 5393–98.

The correlation of a rise in mammal
diversity with the ecological vacuum produced by the end-Cretaceous extinction is supported most recently in R. W. Meredith et al., “Impacts of the Cretaceous Terrestrial Revolution and KPg Extinction on Mammal Diversification,”
Science
334 (2010): 521–24.

Paul Tudge’s memorable flight over the Arctic was described in the original news accounts in 1986; see M. Lemonick, C. Tower, and D. Webster, “Unearthing a Fossil Forest,”
Time
, September 22, 1986. Original papers from the primary literature include J. F. Basinger, “Early Tertiary Floristics and Paleoclimate in the Very High Latitudes,”
American Journal of Botany
76, no. S6 (1989): 158; J. F. Basinger, “The Fossil Forests of the Buchanan Lake Formation (Early Tertiary), Axel Heiberg Island, Canadian Arctic Archipelago: Preliminary Floristics and Paleoclimate,” in
Tertiary Fossil Forests of the Geodetic Hills, Axel Heiberg Island, Arctic Archipelago
, Geological Survey of Canada Bulletin no. 403, ed. R. L. Christie and N. J. McMillan (Ottawa: Geological Survey of Canada, 1991), 39–65; D. R. Greenwood and J. F. Basinger, “The Paleoecology of High-Latitude Eocene Swamp Forests from Axel Heiberg Island, Canadian High Arctic,”
Review of Palaeobotany and Palynology
81, no. 1 (1994): 83–97; D. R. Greenwood and J. F. Basinger, “Stratigraphy and Floristics of Eocene Swamp Forests from Axel Heiberg Island, Canadian Arctic Archipelago,”
Canadian Journal of Earth Sciences
30, no. 9 (1992): 1914–23; B. A. Lepage and J. F. Basinger, “Early Tertiary Larix from the Buchanan Lake Formation, Canadian Arctic Archipelago, and a Consideration of the Phytogeography of the Genus,” in Christie and McMillan,
Tertiary Fossil Forests of the Geodetic Hills
, 67–82.

Colbert’s discovery in
Antarctica was also the subject of news accounts of the time; see “New Life for Gondwanaland,”
Time
, March 22, 1968. You can hear Colbert himself tell you of his Antarctica work at
http://www.youtube.com/​watch?v=UNe5SGkQP7Q
. The discovery of
Lystrosaurus
from Antarctica is described in E. Colbert, “
Lystrosaurus
from Antarctica,”
American Museum Novitates
2535 (1974): 1–44,
http://digitallibrary.amnh.org/​dspace/​bitstream/​handle/​2246/​5462//v2/​dspace/​ingest/​pdfSource/​nov/​N2535.pdf?sequence=1
.

The
faint-young-sun paradox—the notion that a warming sun hasn’t correlated to an overheated Earth—is first discussed by C. Sagan and G. Mullen,
“Earth and Mars: Evolution of Atmospheres and Surface
Temperatures,”
Science
177 (1972): 52–56.

A wealth of classic papers on carbon, climate, and atmosphere, including
Arrhenius’s from 1896, are republished and discussed in David Archer and
Raymond Pierrehumbert, eds.,
The Warming Papers
(Hoboken, N.J.: Wiley-Blackwell, 2011).

The famous
BLaG paper is R. A. Berner, A. C. Lasaga, and R. M. Garrels, “The Carbonate-Silicate Geochemical Cycle and Its Effect on
Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide over the Past 100 Million Years,”
American Journal of Science
283 (1983): 451–73. One seminal paper that preceded this (in science there are often many) is J. C. G. Walker, P. B. Hays, and J. F. Kasting, “A Negative Feedback Mechanism for the Long-Term Stabilization of Earth’s Surface Temperature,”
Journal of Geophysical Research
86 (1981): 9776–82. More recently, an update of the model is in R. A. Berner and Z. Kothavala, “Geocarb III: A Revised Model of Atmospheric CO
₂
over Phanerozoic Time,”
American Journal of Science
301 (2001): 182–204.

Maureen Raymo and her coauthors, W. F. Ruddiman and P. N. Froelich, launched a debate with the original publication of their uplift-climate hypothesis in M. E. Raymo, W. F. Ruddiman, and P. N. Froelich, “Influence of Late Cenozoic
Mountain Building on Ocean Geochemical Cycles,”
Geology
16 (1988): 649–53; M. E. Raymo and W. F. Ruddiman, “Tectonic Forcing of Late Cenozoic Climate,”
Nature
359 (1992): 117–22; and M. E. Raymo, “The Himalayas, Organic Carbon Burial, and Climate in the Miocene,”
Paleoceanography
9 (1994): 399–404. This idea has very deep historical roots, deriving from some elements in T. C. Chamberlin’s work of the late nineteenth century: T. C. Chamberlin, “An Attempt to Frame a Working Hypothesis of the Cause of Glacial Periods on an Atmospheric Basis,”
Journal of Geology
7 (1899): 545–84, 667–85, 751–87. See also Raymo’s commentary in M. E. Raymo, “Geochemical Evidence Supporting T. C. Chamberlin’s Theory of Glaciation,”
Geology
19 (1991): 344–47. For a general volume containing a number of different perspectives, see W. F. Ruddiman, ed.,
Tectonic Uplift and Climate Change
(New York: Plenum Press, 1997). See also J. C. Zachos and L. R. Kump, “Carbon Cycle Feedbacks and the Initiation of Antarctic Glaciation in the Earliest Oligocene,”
Global and Planetary Change
47 (2005): 51–66, for references.

For a recent paper seeking to put the different lines of evidence together, see C. Garzione, “Surface Uplift of Tibet and Cenozoic Global Cooling,”
Geology
36 (2008): 1003–4. For a discussion of the geochemical issues related to the Raymo hypothesis, see S. E. McCauley and D. DePaolo, “The Marine
⁸⁷
Sr/
⁸⁶
Sr and d
¹⁸
O Records, Himalayan Alkalinity Fluxes and Cenozoic Climate Models,” in Ruddiman,
Tectonic Uplift and Climate Change
, 428–65.

A classic map of carbon dioxide levels over time is R. A. Berner, “Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide Levels over Phanerozoic Time,”
Science
249, no. 4975 (1990): 1382–86.

The interval prior to 45 million years ago was a hot one (known as the
PETM, Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum), and many have looked at the plants, carbon dioxide, and other factors at this time. An entrée to this literature includes F. A. McInerney and S. L. Wing, “The Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum: A Perturbation of Carbon Cycle, Climate, and Biosphere with Implications for the Future,”
Annual Review of Earth and Planetary Sciences
39 (2011): 489–516; A. Sluija et al., “Subtropical Arctic
Ocean Temperatures During the Palaeocene/Eocene Thermal Maximum,”
Nature
441 (2006): 610–13; J. C. Zachos et al., “A Transient Rise in Tropical Sea Surface Temperature During the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum,”
Science
302 (2003): 1151–54; J. P. Kennett and L. D. Stott, “Abrupt Deep-Sea Warming, Palaeoceanographic Changes, and Benthic Extinctions at the End of the Palaeocene,”
Nature
353 (1991): 225–29; and S. L. Wing et al., “Coordinated Sedimentary and Biotic Change During the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum in the Bighorn Basin, Wyoming, USA,” in
Conference Programme and Abstracts: CBEP 2009, Climatic and Biotic Events of the Paleogene, 12–15 January 2009, Wellington, New Zealand
, ed. C. P. Strong, Erica M. Crouch, and C. J. Hollis (Lower Hutt, N.Z.: Institute of Geological and Nuclear Sciences, 2009), 156–62.

The paper describing the importance of new patterns of ocean circulation to Antarctica’s climate is J. P. Kennett, “Cenozoic Evolution of Antarctic Glaciation, the Circum-Antarctic Ocean, and Their Impact on Global Paleoceanography,”
Journal of Geophysical Research
82 (1977): 3843–60. The timing of the
freezing of Antarctica and its relationship to oceanic circulation are the subject of J. Anderson et al., “Progressive Cenozoic Cooling and the Demise of Antarctica’s Last Refugium,”
PNAS
108 (2011): 11356–60.

Nate
Dominy’s papers on
color vision and fruit include N. Dominy and P. W.
Lucas, “Ecological Importance of Trichromatic Vision to Primates,”
Nature
410 (2001): 363–66; N. Dominy, “Fruits, Fingers, and Fermentation: The Sensory Cues Available to Foraging Primates,”
Integrative and Comparative Biology
44 (2004): 295–303; N. Dominy and P. W. Lucas, “Significance of Color, Calories, and Climate to the Visual Ecology of Catarrhines,”
American Journal of Primatology
62 (2004): 189–207.

The mobile
field kit designed by Dominy and his colleagues is described in P. W. Lucas et al., “Field Kit to Characterize Physical, Chemical, and Spatial Aspects of Potential Primate Foods,”
Folia Primatologica
72, no. 1 (2001): 11–25.

For background on the military history of
Project Iceworm and
Camp Century, see E. D. Weiss, “Cold War Under the Ice: The Army’s Bid for a
Long-Range Nuclear Role, 1959–1963,”
Journal of Cold War Studies
3, no. 3 (Fall 2001): 31–58.

The discovery of the causes for the
ice ages, as well as the hidden climatic records in ice, have been the subject of fantastic general science books: John Imbrie and Katherine Palmer Imbrie,
Ice Ages: Solving the Mystery
(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1986); Richard B. Alley,
The Two-Mile Time Machine: Ice Cores, Abrupt Climate Change, and Our Future
(Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2002); and Doug Macdougall,
Frozen Earth: The Once and Future Story of Ice Ages
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006). All three are science writing at its best: authoritative, captivating, and well referenced. Detailed studies of ice cores, of the type described in Alley’s
Two-Mile Time Machine
, reveal a complex set of cycles and
oceanic events, each with their own names—Dansgaard-Oeschger cycles, Bond cycles, Heinrich events, and MacAyeal cycles. Climate can fluctuate wildly based on changes to
glaciers, ocean circulation, and prevailing winds. Our understanding of the global extent and interworkings of the variables is a work in progress, aided by the increasing resolution available to geologists mapping chemical and physical changes to oceans and glaciers.

The impact of the ice ages on one part of
human history is discussed in Brian Fagan,
The Little Ice Age: How Climate Made History, 1300–1850
(New York: Basic Books, 2001). For a beautiful account of how ice ages have affected both the landscape and life, see: E. C. Pielou,
After the Ice Age: The Return of Life to Glaciated North America
(Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1991).

The work of Libby and Urey is discussed in Macdougall’s superb
Nature’s Clocks
.

An account of
Dorothy Garrod can be found in P. J. Smith, “Dorothy Garrod as the First Woman Professor at Cambridge University,”
Antiquity
74 (2000): 131–36.

The importance of climate change and
Natufian culture on the development of agriculture is the subject of debate, with the classical view in O. Bar-Yosef, “The Natufian Culture in the Levant, Threshold to the Origins of Agriculture,”
Evolutionary Anthropology
6, no. 5 (1998): 159–77; and O. Bar-Yosef and A. Belfer-Cohen, “The Origins of Sedentism and Farming Communities in the Levant,”
Journal of World Prehistory
3 (1989): 447–98. Other views—including contrary ones—are discussed in M. Balter, “The Tangled Roots of Agriculture,”
Science
327 (2010): 404–6.

The ways that
diet, particularly the origin of agriculture, has influenced the structure of our
genome are discussed in Spencer Wells,
Pandora’s Seed: The Unforeseen Cost of Civilization
(New York: Random House, 2010). Jonathan Pritchard’s seminal article on
selection in the human genome is B. F. Voight, S. Kudaravalli, X. Wen, and J. K. Pritchard, “A Map of Recent Positive Selection in the Human Genome,”
PLoS Biology
4, no. 3 (2006). See also P. Sabeti
et al., “Genome-wide Detection and Characterization of Positive Selection in Human Populations,”
Nature
(2007): 913–88; and D. J. Wilson et al., “A Population Genetics-Phylogenetic Approach to Inferring Natural Selection in Coding Sequences,”
PLoS Genetics
7, no. 12 (2011).