In search of possible causes of mass extinctions

2004 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tony Hallam
Keyword(s):  
Science Fiction ◽  
High Rate ◽  
Mass Extinctions ◽  
Geological Time ◽  
Steven Spielberg ◽  
Geological Past ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Cretaceous Period ◽  
Land Vertebrates

When the subject of extinctions in the geological past comes up, nearly everyone’s thoughts turn to dinosaurs. It may well be true that these long-extinct beasts mean more to most children than the vast majority of living creatures. One could even go so far as to paraphrase Voltaire and maintain that if dinosaurs had never existed it would have been necessary to invent them, if only as a metaphor for obsolescence. To refer to a particular machine as a dinosaur would certainly do nothing for its market value. The irony is that the metaphor is now itself obsolete. The modern scientific view of dinosaurs differs immensely from the old one of lumbering, inefficient creatures tottering to their final decline. Their success as dominant land vertebrates through 165 million years of the Earth’s history is, indeed, now mainly regarded with wonder and even admiration. If, as is generally thought, the dinosaurs were killed off by an asteroid at the end of the Cretaceous, that is something for which no organism could possibly have been prepared by normal Darwinian natural selection. The final demise of the dinosaurs would then have been the result, not of bad genes, but of bad luck, to use the laconic words of Dave Raup. In contemplating the history of the dinosaurs it is necessary to rectify one widespread misconception. Outside scientific circles the view is widely held that the dinosaurs lived for a huge slice of geological time little disturbed by their environment until the final apocalypse. This is a serious misconception. The dinosaurs suffered quite a high evolutionary turnover rate, and this implies a high rate of extinction throughout their history. Jurassic dinosaurs, dominated by giant sauropods, stegosaurs, and the top carnivore Allosaurus, are quite different from those of the Cretaceous period, which are characterized by diverse hadrosaurs, ceratopsians, and Tyrannosaurus. Michael Crichton’s science-fiction novel Jurassic Park, made famous by the Steven Spielberg movies, features dinosaurs that are mainly from the Cretaceous, probably because velociraptors and Tyrannosaurus could provide more drama.

When did We Start to Change Things?

2009 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas N. Sherratt ◽  
David M. Wilkinson
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Global Warming ◽  
Science Fiction ◽  
Early Summer ◽  
Current Evidence ◽  
Future Climate Change ◽  
Worst Case ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Subject ◽  
James Lovelock

As we wrote the first draft of this chapter (during early summer 2007), the potential dangers of ‘global warming’ had moved up the news agenda to a point where most major politicians were starting to take the problem seriously. Our opening quotation comes from a book published in early 2006, which seemed to coincide with the growth of this wider concern with global warming. Lovelock was not alone in trying to raise awareness of the problem; around the same time another book on climate change by the zoologist and palaeontologist Tim Flannery also attracted global attention to this issue, as did the lecture tours (and Oscar-winning film) of Al Gore—the former US presidential candidate and campaigner on the dangers of climate change. Indeed, in his role as a climate campaigner Gore won a share in the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize. It is possible that future historians will see the period 2005–2007 as the start of a crucial wider engagement with these problems. Things may not be as bad as James Lovelock suggests—in his book he deliberately emphasized the most worrying scenarios coming from computer models, and other evidence, in an attempt to draw attention to the critical nature of the problem. However, all these worst case scenarios were drawn from within the range of results that most climate scientists believed could plausibly happen—not extreme cases with little current evidence to support them. That one of the major environmental scientists of the second half of the twentieth century could write such prose as science—rather than science fiction—is clearly a case for concern about future climate change. It also raises another important question, relating to the history of human influence on our planet: when in our history did we start to have major environmental impacts on Earth as a whole? This is clearly an important issue from a historical perspective, but the answers may also have implications for some of our attempts to rectify the damage. Our discussion of this question comes with various caveats. Many of the arguments we consider in this chapter are still the subject of academic disagreement.

scholarly journals O-bi, o-ba: Koniec cywilizacji – postpiśmienny świat Piotra Szulkina

1970 ◽  
pp. 273-284
Author(s):  
Maciej Pietrzak
Keyword(s):  
Science Fiction ◽  
Biblical Text ◽  
The Third ◽  
The Future ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Written Word ◽  
The Way ◽  
Adam Mickiewicz

Pietrzak Maciej, O-bi, o-ba: Koniec cywilizacji – postpiśmienny świat Piotra Szulkina [O-Bi, O-Ba: The End of Civilization – The Postliterate World of Piotr Szulkin]. „Przestrzenie Teorii” nr 32. Poznań 2019, Adam Mickiewicz University Press, pp. 273–284. ISSN 1644-6763. DOI 10.14746/pt.2019.32.14. Piotr Szulkin made his mark in the history of cinema primarily as the author of disturbing visions of the future. His four films made between 1979 and 1985 comprised the science-fiction tetralogy, which is still one of the greatest artistic achievements of this genre in Polish cinema. The subject of the article is the third production of Szulkin’s series – the post-apocalyptic film O-Bi, O-Ba: The End of Civilization from 1984. In the film, the director creates a suggestive vision of a world destroyed as a result of nuclear conflict, in which the original functions of literature and the written word are forgotten. The author article analyzes the way in which forsaken literary artifacts are used in the post-literary reality of the film. An important element of his considerations is also the post-apocalyptic reception of the biblical text, on whose elements the mythology of the film’s world is based.

Science Fiction Futures and (Re)visions of the Anthropocene

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Julia D. Gibson ◽  
Kyle Powys Whyte
Keyword(s):  
Technological Change ◽  
Science Fiction ◽  
Philosophy Of Technology ◽  
Future Generations ◽  
Climate Justice ◽  
Mass Extinctions ◽  
Technological Risk ◽  
History Of ◽  
Key Issues ◽  
Climate Crisis

This chapter discusses how humans envision futures, especially environmental futures, including the climate crisis, the Anthropocene, and mass extinctions. Although the philosophy of technology has traditionally examined the forecasting of technological risk and arguments about whether to embrace or reject the growth of technological mediation of human lives, the field has yet to fully investigate environmental futurisms and imagination. To begin a conversation for the philosophy of technology, philosophies of science fiction narrative discuss the different roles that imagination plays in projecting our concerns with the present onto futures that have not occurred and future generations who are not yet living. One of the key issues that the chapter explores is how science fiction imagination is based on assumptions and values about the history of technological change, including industrialization, capitalism, and colonialism. These issues reveal ways in which technology, future narrative, and climate justice are related.

scholarly journals A Natural Colonisation of Asia: Phylogenomic and Biogeographic History of Coin Spiders (Araneae: Nephilidae: Herennia)

Diversity ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (11) ◽  
pp. 515
Author(s):  
Eva Turk ◽  
Jason E. Bond ◽  
Ren-Chung Cheng ◽  
Klemen Čandek ◽  
Chris A. Hamilton ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
The Philippines ◽  
Geological Time ◽  
Tropical Asia ◽  
Se Asia ◽  
Biogeographic History ◽  
Phylogenetic Data ◽  
Geological Past ◽  
Temporal Intervals ◽  
Anchored Hybrid Enrichment ◽  
History Of

Reconstructing biogeographic history is challenging when dispersal biology of studied species is poorly understood, and they have undergone a complex geological past. Here, we reconstruct the origin and subsequent dispersal of coin spiders (Nephilidae: Herennia Thorell), a clade of 14 species inhabiting tropical Asia and Australasia. Specifically, we test whether the all-Asian range of Herennia multipuncta is natural vs. anthropogenic. We combine Anchored Hybrid Enrichment phylogenomic and classical marker phylogenetic data to infer species and population phylogenies. Our biogeographical analyses follow two alternative dispersal models: ballooning vs. walking. Following these assumptions and considering measured distances between geographical areas through temporal intervals, these models infer ancestral areas based on varying dispersal probabilities through geological time. We recover a wide ancestral range of Herennia including Australia, mainland SE Asia and the Philippines. Both models agree that H. multipuncta internal splits are generally too old to be influenced by humans, thereby implying its natural colonisation of Asia, but suggest quite different colonisation routes of H. multipuncta populations. The results of the ballooning model are more parsimonious as they invoke fewer chance dispersals over large distances. We speculate that coin spiders’ ancestor may have lost the ability to balloon, but that H. multipuncta regained it, thereby colonising and maintaining larger areas.

Does global diversity mean anything?

Paleobiology ◽  
2003 ◽  
Vol 29 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-7 ◽  
Author(s):  
Geerat J. Vermeij ◽  
Lindsey R. Leighton
Keyword(s):  
Biological Diversity ◽  
Marine Invertebrate ◽  
Land Plants ◽  
Mass Extinctions ◽  
Major Goal ◽  
Global Diversity ◽  
Invertebrate Diversity ◽  
Late Neogene ◽  
History Of ◽  
Land Vertebrates

A major goal of paleobiological research since the early 1960s has been the reconstruction in quantitative terms of the history of biological diversity. Spearheaded by Valentine (1969), Raup (1972, 1976a, b), and Sepkoski (1979, 1981, 1984, 1990, 1993), this effort has yielded estimates of global diversity through time, as well as calculations of global rates and magnitudes of extinction and diversification. A consensus emerging in the early 1980s (Sepkoski et al. 1981) indicated that global marine invertebrate diversity rose through the Cambrian and Ordovician periods to a plateau, which with brief extinction-related interruptions was maintained from the mid-Paleozoic to the mid-Mesozoic. Beginning in the Cretaceous, diversity rose again, reaching a peak in the late Neogene. The five mass extinctions of the Phanerozoic, and more or less distinct episodes of diversification, were identified and distinguished from many lesser events (Raup and Sepkoski 1982). Comparable studies, with varying results, were conducted on land vertebrates (Benton 1985, 1989), land plants (Knoll et al. 1979; Niklas et al. 1980, 1983; Tiffney 1981; Knoll 1984), early protistans (Knoll 1994), insects (Labandeira and Sepkoski 1993), and life as a whole (Van Valen 1984, 1985; Van Valen and Maiorana 1985; Signor 1990; Valentine et al. 1991; Benton 1995; Courtillot and Gaudemer 1996; Miller and Foote 1996).

scholarly journals II.—Pre-Cambrian Volcanos and Glaciers

1880 ◽  
Vol 7 (11) ◽  
pp. 488-491
Author(s):  
Henry Hicks
Keyword(s):  
British Association ◽  
Geological Time ◽  
The Earth ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Subject

The subject of the recurrence of phenomena in geological time, so prominently brought forward by Prof. Ramsay in his recent address as President of the British Association, is one which cannot fail to be of interest to the geologist, as it constantly presents itself to him in all his inquiries. There are also doubtless many who are prepared to go with Prof. Ramsay to the length of his conclusions, and who believe “that from the Laurentian epoch down to the present day, all the physical events in the history of the earth have varied neither in kind nor in intensity from those which we now have experienced;” whilst others will be inclined to believe that though generally they have resembled one another in kind, yet that some have varied greatly in their intensity.

Four new Lower Barremian amber outcrops from Northern Lebanon

2019 ◽  
Vol 2 (4) ◽  
pp. 333-339
Author(s):  
SIBELLE MAKSOUD ◽  
KHALED TALEB ◽  
DANY AZAR
Keyword(s):  
Chemical Composition ◽  
Science Fiction ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Geological Time ◽  
Steven Spielberg ◽  
Plant Resin ◽  
The Past ◽  
American Science

Amber is a fossilized plant resin that is preserved and modified throughout geological time (Langenheim, 1969). The complexity of the chemical composition of amber makes it unique considering the preservation of biological inclusions in their 3D pristine and minute details (Langenheim, 2003). Its age ranges between a few millions and 320 million years (mid-Carboniferous) (Sargent Bray & Anderson, 2009). During the past two to three decades, the discoveries worldwide of new amber outcrops have increased. There is no doubt that Jurassic Park in 1993, the famous American science fiction adventure thriller film directed by Steven Spielberg and based on the novel of the same name by Michael Crichton, played a noticeable role in making amber more popular. Before this date, interest in amber was mainly restricted to Baltic and Caribbean countries, though amber occurrence was known from several localities worldwide.

scholarly journals Psychoanalysis, science fiction and cyborgianism

Literator ◽  
1996 ◽  
Vol 17 (2) ◽  
pp. 105-116 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. Sey
Keyword(s):  
Science Fiction ◽  
The Body ◽  
The Self ◽  
Crucial Importance ◽  
Hybrid Form ◽  
History Of The Body ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Psychoanalytic Thought ◽  
Do So

Central to this paper is the understanding that much of crucial importance to psychoanalytic thought rests on a conception of the subject as inseparable from a history of the body a history in turn inseparable from the central tenets of Oedipus, in its turn a concept which originates in and is illustrated by literature. The paper will suggest that when recent cultural theorists, drawing on the implications of cybernetics and infoculture theory, contest the psychoanalytic notion of the subject, it is not surprising that they do so in terms of the possibility of an alternative body - a hybrid form of subjectivity between human and machine. Nor, the paper suggests, is it surprising that it should be science fiction, a genre with a long-standing concern with the possibility of such an amalgam, which supplies the key evidence for a post-oedipal theory of this "cyborg" subject. The paper concludes by speculating on the productivity of the conjunction between literature and thinking about the body, inasmuch as this conjunction attempts to establish a new anthropology of the self.

scholarly journals The future of the oceans past

2010 ◽  
Vol 365 (1558) ◽  
pp. 3765-3778 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeremy B. C. Jackson
Keyword(s):  
Ocean Acidification ◽  
Deep Sea ◽  
Mass Extinction ◽  
Mass Extinctions ◽  
Conservation Action ◽  
Isthmus Of Panama ◽  
Geological Past ◽  
History Of ◽  
Short Time ◽  
Oceanographic Conditions

Major macroevolutionary events in the history of the oceans are linked to changes in oceanographic conditions and environments on regional to global scales. Even small changes in climate and productivity, such as those that occurred after the rise of the Isthmus of Panama, caused major changes in Caribbean coastal ecosystems and mass extinctions of major taxa. In contrast, massive influxes of carbon at the end of the Palaeocene caused intense global warming, ocean acidification, mass extinction throughout the deep sea and the worldwide disappearance of coral reefs. Today, overfishing, pollution and increases in greenhouse gases are causing comparably great changes to ocean environments and ecosystems. Some of these changes are potentially reversible on very short time scales, but warming and ocean acidification will intensify before they decline even with immediate reduction in emissions. There is an urgent need for immediate and decisive conservation action. Otherwise, another great mass extinction affecting all ocean ecosystems and comparable to the upheavals of the geological past appears inevitable.

scholarly journals Mesozoic mass extinctions and angiosperm radiation: does the molecular clock tell something new?

Geologos ◽  
2012 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 37-42 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dmitry Ruban
Keyword(s):  
Molecular Clock ◽  
Global Scale ◽  
Flowering Plants ◽  
Mass Extinctions ◽  
Geological Time ◽  
Late Mesozoic ◽  
Environmental Perturbation ◽  
History Of

Mesozoic mass extinctions and angiosperm radiation: does the molecular clock tell something new?Angiosperms evolved rapidly in the late Mesozoic. Data from the genetic-based approach called ‘molecular clock’ permit an evaluation of the radiation of flowering plants through geological time and of the possible influences of Mesozoic mass extinctions. A total of 261 divergence ages of angiosperm families are considered. The radiation of flowering plants peaked in the Albian, early Campanian, and Maastrichtian. From the three late Mesozoic mass extinctions (Jurassic/Cretaceous, Cenomanian/Turonian, and Cretaceous/Palaeogene), only the Cretaceous/Palaeogene event coincided with a significant, abrupt, and long-term decline in angiosperm radiation. If their link will be further proven, this means that global-scale environmental perturbation precluded from many innovations in the development of plants. This decline was, however, not unprecedented in the history of the angiosperms. The implication of data from the molecular clock for evolutionary reconstructions is limited, primarily because this approach deals with only extant lineages.

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