Best paleontology books according to redditors
We found 68 Reddit comments discussing the best paleontology books. We ranked the 26 resulting products by number of redditors who mentioned them. Here are the top 20.
We found 68 Reddit comments discussing the best paleontology books. We ranked the 26 resulting products by number of redditors who mentioned them. Here are the top 20.
Will take a little longer for it to turn green:
https://www.amazon.com/Under-Green-Sky-Warming-Extinctions/dp/0061137928/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=under+a+green+sky&qid=1556728391&s=gateway&sr=8-1
I am not at all an expert on this topic, but I am reading Before the Dawn: Recovering the Lost History of Our Ancestors right now, a fascinating book on the history of humans that tends to favor genetic explanations above the more social anthropological explanations.
This book argues that race is a very real thing, but it has little to do with looks (which is how people traditionally separate out race, e.g. black, white). It argues there are clean genetic clusters (based on a small number of genes) that can be referred to as "human races". You can say this person is ~x% this cluster, y% that, etc. You are right that genetically individuals are very diverse, but some genes dominate in some races. Just a few 100 years can create some major genetic changes that are selected for in that group. This is a fact supported by many examples, like the intelligence of Ashkenazi Jews, or the long distance running abilities of East Africans.
It is possible to look at someone's genetic signature and map them to a cluster pretty cleanly. Whether you want to call this "race" or not is debatable given the terrible history of race relations, but that is just a semantic debate. The politically correct stance that there is no difference between human populations hides the truth for social reasons.
Random selection of some of my favorites to help you expand your horizons:
The Demon-Haunted World by Carl Sagan is a great introduction to scientific skepticism.
Letter to a Christian Nation by Sam Harris is a succinct refutation of Christianity as it's generally practiced in the US employing crystal-clear logic.
Augustus: The Life of Rome's First Emperor by Anthony Everitt is the best biography of one of the most interesting men in history, in my personal opinion.
Travels with Herodotus by Ryszard Kapuscinski is a jaw-dropping book on history, journalism, travel, contemporary events, philosophy.
A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson is a great tome about... everything. Physics, history, biology, art... Plus he's funny as hell. (Check out his In a Sunburned Country for a side-splitting account of his trip to Australia).
The Annotated Mona Lisa by Carol Strickland is a thorough primer on art history. Get it before going to any major museum (Met, Louvre, Tate Modern, Prado, etc).
Not the Impossible Faith by Richard Carrier is a detailed refutation of the whole 'Christianity could not have survived the early years if it weren't for god's providence' argument.
Six Easy Pieces by Richard Feynman are six of the easier chapters from his '63 Lectures on Physics delivered at CalTech. If you like it and really want to be mind-fucked with science, his QED is a great book on quantum electrodynamics direct from the master.
Lucy's Legacy by Donald Johanson will give you a really great understanding of our family history (homo, australopithecus, ardipithecus, etc). Equally good are Before the Dawn: Recovering the Lost History of Our Ancestors by Nicholas Wade and Mapping Human History by Steve Olson, though I personally enjoyed Before the Dawn slightly more.
Memory and the Mediterranean by Fernand Braudel gives you context for all the Bible stories by detailing contemporaneous events from the Levant, Italy, Greece, Egypt, etc.
After the Prophet by Lesley Hazleton is an awesome read if you don't know much about Islam and its early history.
Happy reading!
edit: Also, check out the Reasonable Doubts podcast.
Yes. I read Peter Ward's Under a Green Sky when it came out in 2008. I remember wondering why everyone wasn't talking about it.
I don't know how much literature there is of gorgon behavior, but Peter D. Ward is a well known authority on them and I'm sure he would be a good place to start for finding other references.
You should read his book: https://www.amazon.com/Gorgon-Paleontology-Obsession-Greatest-Catastrophe/dp/0670030945
He's a great writer and engaging without being too simplistic.
Good luck! Gorgonopsids are the shit.
A good summary of the origins of Australian Aborigines, as well as much of early human history, can be found in Before the Dawn by Nicholas Wade.
You win. My son's only 1 years old, but I found this book at a thrift store and can't wait for the awesomeness to begin.
Ah yes, the Canfield Ocean. Purple anoxic ocean under a green sky, such pretty colors. To see such a thing, would be both beautiful and cosmically horrific.
> Not only are there many ERVs shared among primates, but they are shared in hierarchical subsets of the whole. Each set falls within another set, giving an unbroken line of inheritance for every species (Kurdyukov et al., 2001; Lebedev et al., 2000). This pattern is called a nested hierarchy. These patterns further corroborate that the many species of primates share common ancestry, and necessitate a specific sequence of divergence from one ancestral species to the next. They are wholly inexplicable by the model of uncommon ancestry.
>methodically state the case for why creation is most likely and/or why evolution is unlikely.
You will find lots and lots of the latter. Very little of the former.
>I'd also be happy to read GOOD anti-creation books as well, provided they meet the above criterion of not being mocking.
Those would just be science books based on the academic literature, wouldn't they?
Here is my reading list form the past few months. These would be pro-evolution (a.k.a science). Creationism is mentioned in a few of them, but almost in passing because Creationism is simply not a factor in legitimate scientific research, so it gets pretty much no consideration.
Knock yourself out. ;)
FREE
(On The Origin Of Species)
http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1228
KINDLE
(Why Evolution Is True (Jeffrey Coyne)
http://www.amazon.com/Why-Evolution-Is-True-ebook/dp/B001QEQRJW/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1368402079&sr=1-1&keywords=why+evolution+is+true
(Evolution: What the Fossils say)
http://www.amazon.com/Evolution-What-Fossils-Matters-ebook/dp/B007H9RGOK/ref=pd_sim_kstore_8
(Your Inner Fish)
http://www.amazon.com/Your-Inner-Fish-3-5-Billion-Year-ebook/dp/B0010SKTRA/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1368402391&sr=1-1&keywords=your+inner+fish
and there's a really good power point you can download here:
https://ssl.cbsd.org/sites/teachers/hs/jucollins/Pages/Evolution-Page.aspx
>their genome was edited to make them much larger than they should otherwise be
None of the dinosaurs in Jurassic Park were authentic; they are all theme park monsters. This point is made in the original book, but isn't really brought up in the first movie; Dr. Wu talks about it pretty heavily during an exposition scene in Jurassic World, however.
That said, the Utahraptor was not discovered until after Jurassic Park was released, and just happens to be the same size as the film's Velociraptors.
Per the Jurassic Park wiki:
>In the Jurassic Park universe, the term "Velociraptor" is applied to the genus of another dromaeosaurid dinosaur known as Deinonychus. The films, like the novels, followed the unusual taxonomy created by Gregory S. Paul, who believed that Deinonychus, as well as a few other species of dromaeosaurids, could be classified under the genus "Velociraptor".^[1] As for the large size of the raptors, the novel raptors were sized up for an unknown reason by author Michael Crichton while the movie raptors were made larger per Steven Spielberg's request to him being unimpressed by the size of Deinonychus.^[2]
Back in the old days, most people were hairy hominids, but some had patterns of baldness across their bodies. This was novel, attractive. They got to be fucked more often. That baldness gene got past on. And now men want to fuck things like Kate Upton, Beyonce, or a Fleshlight.
See, Before the Dawn
This book was written by one of the paleontologists who consulted for the Jurassic Park films. He was one of the major reasons why they kept updating the appearance and behaviours of the dinos. The book explains that they're looking at using protein signals during embryo development, rather than cloning from DNA, to create atavistic traits in chicken/turkey embryos they will one day be able to manipulate the development to form a dinosaur. They would look identical to their gene-sake, but would still feed off a chicken's diet and taste like poultry if you were to eat one. Totally worth a read.
No problem! Here are a couple of books that might help you along, if you haven't already gotten a hold of them! :)
All Yesterdays, a wonderfully provocative book that challenges common paleoart tropes.
The Paleoart of Julius Csontonyi is awesome. Most of his artwork can be found online, but it's nice to have it there in your hands. I won't go so far as to say Csotonyi is the modern day Charles R. Knight, but he's rapidly gaining that reputation.
Predatory Dinosaurs of the World by Gregory S. Paul. Modern paleoart owes a lot to Paul's work, even if his attention to anatomical detail resulted in dinosaurs that are just a bit too lithe.
Finally, we have William Stout's The New Dinosaurs. Yes, at times Stout makes his dinos look downright emaciated, but his comic-book-y style and portrayal of dinosaur behavior is a bit prescient of "All Yesterdays," and I can't help but associate his work with those wonderfully cheesy 1980s dino documentaries with Gary Owens, and that catchy theme music.
And once again, good luck!
This book has a faunal list accurate to the time of publication. A few new species have been described since, though.
Sea life survived because the water itself was stratified, i.e. there was a surface layer that was oxic and warm and a deeper layer that was anoxic and cold, and these layers did not mix due to temperature-dependent differences in density. This is typical of deep lacustrine and some lagunal aquatic systems. Animals that traversed the boundaries between these layers would have quickly died.
>>>> But, when I watch wildlife, I also see joy, love, and beauty that is not present on the moon.
I'm not sure why you're mostly fixated on beauty from this sentence and are largely ignoring the joy and are completely ignoring the love.
> What i want to know is, what antinatalist reasoning could apply to only humans, other than pure misanthropy?
I've been talking about balance. Is there more pain and suffering or more pleasure, joy, and love.
In humans, I also add in the deliberate and calculated and unnecessary cruelty both to ourselves and to other sentiences. I think this is something that exists to some degree in some other species but is rare outside of humans, especially the deliberate cruelty for its own sake.
So, within our own species, I may observe that over a billion people are worried about such horrific problems as obesity and high taxes while another more than a billion are worried about little things like being starving or chronically hungry. (I hope the sarcasm in this comparison of problems is obvious.)
But, beyond that, I see the deliberate and calculated cruelty of CAFOs. And then I see the wanton habitat destruction and pollution. And, I see a hundred million sharks each year having their fins cut off and being thrown back into the water still alive but guaranteed to die a slow horrible death.
Birds and turtles die in huge numbers from eating plastic. Ocean acidification is going to cause the collapse of the base of the entire food chain in the ocean because pteropods can't form their shells.
I see the entirety of the holocene extinction becoming minor by comparison to what is coming from climate change. As warming and freshwater melt from ice sheets stops the ocean conveyor, the ocean will become anoxic from the bottom up. Sulfur producing bacteria will thrive in the anoxic depths, but little else will. As the anoxic layer becomes thicker, rising to the surface, the sulfur from these bacteria will be released into the global atmosphere. H2S gas (the smell of rotten eggs) will be released in toxic quantities. The sky will turn green, literally.
As a natural catastrophe that happened 250 million years ago, this was truly horrific and killed off 95% of the multicellular species on the planet at the time.
This time, we humans are causing it!
Under a Green Sky: Global Warming, the Mass Extinctions of the Past, and What They Can Tell Us About Our Future by Peter D. Ward
So, yes. I think humans are different. Humans are a literal catastrophe. In the geological record, if any future species exists to decode it, they will see this time as a catastrophic event in the history of the planet. Perhaps they will wonder how it was all caused by a species that looks a whole lot like a laundry detergent bottle and how that created all of the nuclear waste.
> Second, how do you know that the animals value [joy and pleasure and] beauty in the way we humans do?
I don't. But, before you kill off every sentient being on the planet, wouldn't it pay for you to be sure that they don't?
Yes. I know you are not really planning to annihilate all sentient life on earth. Nor am I actually going to cause human extinction. But, if human extinction is my hope and you are antinatalist for all species, I can only assume your hope would be for all sentient life to go extinct.
> And third, why is [joy and pleasure and] beauty so valuable, that it justifies all the pointless animal lives and all the pain that comes with it?
Because I think that the joy and pleasure can and usually does outweigh the pain and suffering for most animals that have the luxury of living the life for which they evolved in as close to a natural state as possible. And, that is where I personally find the beauty. The beauty is not a justification, just an observation. It is the joy and pleasure that make life worth living.
> You place huge value on beauty.
Actually no. You picked beauty out of a list of three items and fixated on it.
> I dont want to kill animals.
What do you want from your antinatalist views that include animals?
What do you expect to get from telling deer they should not breed?
> What i want to know is why their lives are any better than ours?
It's about the balance. I think I've now explained my view as best I can.
> You reason that humans extinction would be a good thing.
Yes. I think I explained the reason. We cause a tremendous amount of pain and suffering that totally overpowers both the joy and pleasure in the lives of the privileged among us as well as the joy and pleasure experienced by our dogs, cats, and other well-cared-for pets where people do care for their pets lovingly (not a global thing).
> Why does that reasoning not apply to animals?
It is my opinion that the balance is very different among the other animals that aren't destroying the biosphere and that aren't locking their prey animals in CAFOs and that aren't cruel in a deliberate and calculated way and that don't take pleasure in cruelty for its own sake.
> Yes, we dont have the right to outright kill them. But thats not what you plan to do with the humans either?
Correct. I am a member of the Voluntary Human Extinction Movement. The emphasis is on voluntary.
> You claim something has to be done to humans,
I'm not sure what you mean by this. But, I sure as hell don't think I ever said it.
Something will happen to humans. I don't believe we are capable of coming into balance with the rest of the biosphere. I think we will cause our own extinction. I think we will cause the extinction of a great many other sentiences with us (and have already made quite a start on this).
But, I didn't say that I was going to start a nuclear war or some such.
Something will be done to humans by the laws of ecosystems, not by anyone who follows the same ideals I follow.
> why do you not think whatever that it shouldnt be done to other animals?
I hope you agree that this question no longer makes sense in light of my answer above.
> Yes, the earth is more beautiful than the moon, but what does that have to do with anything?
Why do you think the earth is more beautiful than the moon? What is the difference between the two?
As an philanthropic antinatalist, who seems to see only the pain and suffering in life, or at least sees the balance tipped toward the pain and suffering, I would expect you to think that the earth is a vile cesspool of misery. If you do not, why are you a philanthropic antinatalist?
You should pick up Life's Solution by Simon Morris. Also check out biologos. The reason that we can't give you specifics is because science is designed to read God out of the picture (and it should be designed that way). Science gives the specifics of how things get done, they just assume God isn't involved and so all the specifics are cast through that lens. Also if science doesn't want to ask the question of how god interacts with the world then how are they going to produce specifics about it. Christian faith can't give specifics because they weren't revealed to us. What was revealed is what it means to be created, made in the image of god and so forth.
You are asking a philosophical question and demanding a scientific answer.
Check out that Morris book I didn't have the chance to read it all but he is not an intelligent design guy not a creationist person but still see the possibility of God in the universe with evolution (which he accepts as fact).
He is also a professor at cambridge and he teaches something like paleobiology. So not a theologian but a scientist.
Let me know what you think.
Any specific Science books?
I could recommend "How to Build a Dinosaur" by Jack Horner
Or "Greatest Show on Earth" by Dawkins.
but neither of those make a difference if that's not the sciencey genres you were looking for.
Even if you don't believe "Venus" is the worst case (which is reasonable considering that Earth is not Venus already despite massive climate change over its history), this is still a pretty bad scenario.
I'll add Before the Dawn (http://www.amazon.com/Before-Dawn-Recovering-History-Ancestors/dp/014303832X), which focuses on how scientists have used DNA to answer archaeological questions.
Prothero's "Bringing Fossils to life" was one of the into textbooks we used when I took an undergrad invertebrate paleontology class and it is a good introduction. The other book we used was exclusively an invertebrate paleo book, but this one has a decent amount of vertebrate stuff as the author himself researches fossil mammals and Cenozoic stratigraphy.
This isn't representative of the last five books I've read though, since I try to read books from the public library and my university's library. Also, I bought a cookbook and a book on algorithms after the Stieg Larsson book, but I figured we weren't including those kinds of books.
This book is very good, although there are a number of very important recent discoveries that it doesn't include because it's about 7 years old now. Unfortunately I've not read anything more recent since I've kept abreast of the field mostly through journal articles.
Professing to be an atheist and accepting the sound scientific evidence for evolution are completely disconnected. To try to connect the two is somewhat like saying that because I accept the law of gravity, I must be an atheist. The Watchtower likes to confuse the two by attacking atheism and calling it an argument against evolution. But that’s their logical fallacy - don’t buy into it.
BTW, a book I found helpful in learning about evolution and debunking creationism was “Evolution: What the Fossils Say and Why it Matters” by Donald Prothero (https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0231139624/ref=tmm_hrd_title_0?ie=UTF8&qid=&sr=)
On this particular topic, here are some books that I have read (sorry, mere comments from them will not do them justice):
All of these authors have legitimate scientific credentials. With a little searching there is a lot more to be found. You might also check out www.climate.gov.
Good luck.
Book by Donald Prothero that lays out all the fossil evidence for evolution:
http://www.amazon.com/Evolution-What-Fossils-Say-Matters/dp/0231139624
> "I've heard this argument before, and it does not hold water."
Nice. A bold but completely empty assertion.
> "It's merely an attempt to shackle the psuedoscience of evolution to many more well-known and proven sciences."
Ohhhh.. and from there you spring to another, completely unsupported, empty assertion.
> "If you're going to make the audacious claim that all sciences must be abandoned if evolution is not embraced,..."
It's not remotely audacious. The fact you can pretend it is only indicated both the depth of your own lack of knowledge about the sciences in general and the equal lack of such knowledge by most in Christian culture.
> "... I'd like to see your proof."
Nice try. You have made a series of empty assertions in order to hand wave away an entire section of science, (evolutionary theory). The evidence for evolution is as strong, as robust, and as complete as it is for any of the other theories I have listed and is often dependent upon them.
The simplest such example is based upon the fact that those who reject evolution are nearly universally Young Earth Creationist, (I am not saying all, but the vast majority). Evolution demands more time than Young Earth dogma allows for. In order to weasel around Geological dating of fossil records, most Young Earth proponents will put forth hypothesis, (they call them 'theories'... it's actually kindof cute in a 'child playing at scientist' sort of way), that tend to do all of the following: fail to account for most of the factual evidence on hand in the geological sciences, demand that we completely throw out all methods of dating used in modern geological sciences, chuck out everything we know in general about geology.
Well, there goes one of the sciences on my list - thrown out for nothing but ideological reasons.
Lets look closer though. Lets look at all of those objections that young earth proponents have about things like carbon dating and potassium dating methods, (etc...). Others, in many other places, have done a much more complete job of disassembling the standard arguments against these dating methods than I have space for here but the short version is that those dating methods are the result of fundamental aspects of everything we know about physics. If those dating methods are wrong, (which, though possible, would require the presentation of something other than assertion and unfounded hypothesis to establish), then pretty much all of physics is wrong. Admittedly, that would be really cool. I doubt you have any idea how exciting that would actually be to most of the physicist I know. However, as cool as it would be, it is not only terribly unlikely there is absolutely no reason to suspect it, (unless, once again, we count the empty assertions of people with ideological positions and no evidence to suggest that they may be remotely correct).
But wait... there goes a second, entire field, of science. Thrown out the window because people don't like the time scales associated with evolutionary theory.
Really, this just goes on and on. It's also not hard to educate yourself about the scientific reality of this topic either. All you have to do is get out of the echo chamber of people committed to rejecting evolution and an old earth and look around at what the 'other side' is actually saying.
Here, I'll even make it easy for you.
Here's a great book, by a Christian, explaining the in's and outs of why Evolution has to be true based upon what we know.
Here is a brilliant book talking about the fossil record, how we know what we know about it, and what that actually tells us.
Here is a fantastic book about geology as taught and explained through the disasters that we, as humans, experience from it's actions on occasion.
Finally, I give you a link to the Science Based Medicine website through their search tool. You will find there several, researching, practicing, medical doctors; all of whom are highly respected in their fields. This is their blog about medicine, science, and all things that impinge upon those fields. I have taken the liberty of entering 'evolution' into their search bar for you. The resulting page of articles is what comes up. If nothing else, it should provide a good place for you to springboard from in the search for whatever you want to know past that in the several books I have pointed you at.
Lastly, I want to make one final point. if you read the books I have pointed you at, if you start reading the articles on the site I pointed you at, if you from there start reading the articles and books and studies available all through the world of science publication and science blogging you will find something pretty quickly. Each of those books has different information in them. Any real study of evolution exposes you to not one, or two, but many lines of evidence, (from almost all of the sciences), showing that it is true. Every single book I have ever read trying to argue against evolution, on the other hand, always ended up attempting to make the same unsupportable arguments, (irreducible complexity, gaps in the fossil records, efforts to deny various dating methods), that have been addressed by proponents of evolution a million times if once. If you can't understand all that, if you can't even take the time to educate yourself about some of it before dismissing the position counter to yours out of hand, then you are showing yourself as having no interest in truth. Instead you are saying that you are only interested in trying to make the world believe that you are right.
Hi /u/WalterFBishop,
I was a dino-crazy kid, and now I'm a bird-crazy adult, so this topic speaks to my passions! As a result, I've cultivated a list of books I want to read on the subject, but sadly, I haven't read any of these yet. Just the same, here are books I hope to read based on the reviews they've received and apparent comprehensiveness:
all ratings/reviews come from Amazon
Some are pricier than others, as it looks like they're now out-of-print. I'm not sure which of those is the best book on the subject, but that may depend on your preferred reading style and source material. :) I'd recommend clicking on the "Open in Expanded View" option beneath the cover picture of the above books so you can skim a few sample pages to see what speaks to you!
Hope this helps.
This myth about them being the size of a turkey just will not die. :(
Jurassic park Velociraptors were actually Deinonychus which is more very large dog sized with a tail length comparable to that of the movie dinosaurs. They do seem to have been beefed up a little in the movie still.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deinonychus
Look on the right of the above wikipedia page under Synonyms and you'll see Velociraptor antirrhopus Paul, 1988. Click on Paul and it will take you to the page of a palaeontologist named Gregory S. Paul who wrote a book that was the main source that Michael Crichton used to write the novel, and Paul eventually was consulted for the Jurassic Park Movie. At the time that book was written, there was considerable debate as to what subfamily Deinonychus belonged to, hence the reason for some palaeontologists including Paul labelling it as Velociraptor antirrhopus. That name made its way into Michael Crichton's novel and the rest is movie history in terms of naming conventions.
The turkey sized dinosaur that everyone talks about is a completely different species called Velociraptor mongoliensis, so called because Mongolia is the site of the species fossil discovery, and so far all of the other fossil examples of the species are limited to Mongolia and China. In otherwords the turkey raptor is an exclusively Asian species.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Velociraptor
Deinonychus however is an North american species with fossil remains coming exclusively from Wyoming, Oklahoma, and Montana. Where was the dig site at the start of the movie? Yep. Montana. :)
The book even makes the distinction between Velociraptor antirrhopus and Velociraptor mongoliensis by mentioning both species.
Evolution: What the Fossils Say and Why it Matters by Donald Prothero.
Check out Peter Ward's Under a Green Sky. Here's a talk.
You are talking about paleoclimatology, which is an entire scientific discipline that studies exactly what you were talking about. There is extensive literature out there that looks at past climate changes on earth. It is a challenging field, because the rock record has gaps in it and these studies use proxy evidence out of necessity. If you are genuinely curious about past changes in earth's climate (and not just a stubborn climate change denier), Princeton has printed a good, affordable book that introduces most of the major climate events. link
edit: Oh, and the rate of change in atmospheric composition and temperature we are currently experiencing are absolutely unprecedented in earth's 4.6 billion year history.
You should direct most of these questions to r/evolution, since I think they are for the most part a little more informed and a lot more willing to answer questions on the topic. This should get you started though: talk origins archive on the matter of human evolution
edit: also wanted to add that there are plenty of fossil examples; a great book I would suggest is "Evolution" by Don Prothero. This book is great because it focuses almost entirely on the fossil record, which is oftentimes attacked as having "holes" or lacking transitional forms. Keep in mind that nearly every fossil found could be considered a transitional fossil between an ancestor and something else, the term is really a misnomer.
One of the best books I used was Evolution of Tertiary Mammals of North America, Volume 1 because the first chapter is an overview of the climatic changes in the Cenozoic and the second chapter is an overview of the vegetation changes in the Cenozoic. However, it is out of print, so you'll have to check a library (worldcat can help you find the closest copy available).
Evolution of Grasses and Grassland Ecosystems is probably the best overview of what you were asking about, and while it goes into detail, I don't think it's too bogged down with jargon. Mammalian Response to Cenozoic Climate Change and Using phytolith assemblages to reconstruct the origin and
spread of grass-dominated habitats in the great plains of North America during the
late Eocene to early Miocene are two more papers I recommend. If you can't access them through the links, try searching the titles on google scholar to see if you can get them that way.
This is wildly incorrect. Human beings have been shown to be significantly impacting the environment for at least 6,000 years. If you subscribe to the Human Overkill Hypothesis for the Sixth Mass Extinction, then it goes back at least twice that. New Zealand and Madagascar's experiences definitely support this.
Anthony Hallam, the noted but deceased researcher on mass extinctions, stated in Catastrophes and Lesser Calamities, that at no time, nowhere on this world have human populations lived in harmony with nature.
Capitalism has many, many faults. However, destroying the environment predates capitalism's rise by millennia.
Hi bendmorris, we could use a good biologist like yourself. :)
> It's a fallacy to think of humans, or animals, or any specific group as "more evolved" than other organisms.
I think you are misreading what I am saying. If evolution converges on certain solutions then as evolution goes on you get these end results as evolution moves forward. You should read Morris' Life's Solution on this.
> There are countless more evolutionary trajectories that have resulted in modern microorganisms
I think you are arguing that somehow there are so many trajectories you should not expect to get humans necessarily. You should read this book written by several great biologists. They disagree with this line of reasoning very strongly. They think convergence shows it is not correct even though it is the standard lore.
Am I so arrogant as to think me a physicist can say the whole biology community is wrong? No, but when several leading biologists do I start to wonder.
But I appreciate your opinion. You should know there are apparently many biologists who see so much convergence in evolution that this lore is being called into question. (In their minds. Read the books for yourself)
> Here's something to ponder that might challenge your human-centric view of the world
I'm not trying to be human centric. It isn't my fault there is a tremendous amount of convergence in evolution and it also isn't my fault if it converges upon many humanlike traits.
But if there was not widespread convergence you would be 100% correct.
Night Comes to the Cretaceous is a warts-and-all telling of the development of the impact hypothesis. Volcanic Cowboys - well, the title is self-explanatory.
Also Evolution by Donald Prothero was a good one along the same line. He has a couple of talks on youtube based on the book. Your Inner Fish is decent but less substantial. It has a 3 part educational PBS series that I believe is on Netflix. Dawkins is easy to read but he doesn't lay out the evidence as much as he talks about the processes, but those are still good books. The Selfish Gene is excellent.
Also, if we are making suggestion for what to read, I strongly suggest Nicholas Wade's three somewhat recent books on the evolution of religions, cultures, and modern humans. It might allow you to take a broader view of what seem like neat and narrow issues. The audiobooks are well narrated if you prefer those.
http://www.amazon.com/Before-Dawn-Recovering-History-Ancestors/dp/014303832X/ref=la_B001H6WF40_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1410286302&sr=1-2
http://www.amazon.com/Faith-Instinct-Religion-Evolved-Endures/dp/0143118196/ref=la_B001H6WF40_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1410286302&sr=1-3
http://www.amazon.com/Troublesome-Inheritance-Genes-Human-History/dp/1594204462/ref=la_B001H6WF40_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1410286302&sr=1-1
> Science does not "work differently in different countries". Science is the scientific method.
I LOLed at the ignorance, I really did! Oh dear, what a sheltered little life you must lead. Don't get me wrong, I wish research funding fell out of the sky with no political agenda or strings attached, but sadly that is not the reality. Of course if you knew anything about scientific research, I wouldn't have to explain this to you like you were a child.
> I'm agnostic.
If you're agnostic and you're accusing scientists like myself - people who have reviewed the mountain of evidence in support of the theory of evolution by natural selection that converges from dozens of different disciplines and concluded that it is a fact - of being a cult member, then you are either fantastically ignorant or fantastically stupid. Or both.
As it happens, there are several superb books that explain all of the evidence for evolution in ways that are reasonable accessible to educationally deprived individuals such as yourself. Perhaps a little less Fox News for you, and a little more reading, hmm?
http://www.amazon.com/Why-Evolution-True-Jerry-Coyne/dp/0143116649/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1319155823&sr=8-1
http://www.amazon.com/Evolution-What-Fossils-Say-Matters/dp/0231139624/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1319155823&sr=8-2
http://www.amazon.com/Your-Inner-Fish-Journey-3-5-Billion-Year/dp/0307277453/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1319155823&sr=8-3
http://www.amazon.com/Greatest-Show-Earth-Evidence-Evolution/dp/1416594787/ref=sr_1_7?ie=UTF8&qid=1319155823&sr=8-7
Go to the library and look for a historical geology textbook. You will probably have everything you need if you find just one. If you have a choice, this is a good book covering the paleo part, and any historical geology textbook should have a nice long chapter on the Paleocene. For a map, there are a number of good ones, but this is one site I use sometimes (be sure to cite references properly!). There is not a Paleocene map, but you can use the K-T and Eocene maps to get beginning/end conditions. The time period is a fairly interesting one, particularly for the story of development of life. Good luck, and if you make a nice poster, be sure to upload a picture of it!
> so it's not that I don't trust the scientific method! I'm just looking for an explanation put into terms that I can understand.
I get where you're coming from, I just think that eventually you would have to decide whether to trust scientists' previous work and the scientific community as a whole or not. I mean, unless you have multiple years to study the field. Which could be fun, but you might have other plans ;)
When I search on the internet, I do usually see a lot of introductory/"general public" level information. My strategy is if there's a reference to a paper, jump to it. Usually every paper includes an introduction with an overview of previous research, which means I'm basically guaranteed to find the answer, if I am willing to take the time and read the papers (which can be very hard).
But, if you want the easy route, you can pick up a textbook, like this one and get a much more systematic overview. Although admittedly, a reviewer says he "speaks very casually about isotope fractionation, as if everyone should already be familiar with this speciality". Oops! Still, there are other textbooks.
> the last paragraph says that it can be an average of hundreds to thousands of years, measured in Vostok... averaged data... false peaks, false valleys
I don't see the paragraph you're referring to? Also, averaging out data only smooths out peaks and valleys, it can't create ones where none existed.
> chaos makes climate hard
I don't think so. This explains why. It depends what you're trying to do of course. If I had to predict the exact nature of the climate with a doubling of CO2 compared to today, I would be like, "uh, dunno, that's such a huge change, all sorts of chaotic things could happen". But if I were predicting the climate if we kept today's CO2, I think the climate system would stay more similar to today (although it would keep warming for a few decades, it's certainly better compared to the other scenario). That's just basic energy balance really.
> it's arguably a lot better techniques from the 1960ies and forward, that's when we started recording temperature with satellites.
Satellites don't record the temperature, they record radiation - which is actually rather different. To go from that to the temperature requires some assumptions. That's why the satellite temperature record has had to have many corrections that overall, flipped it from showing cooling to warming. Also, a satellite scientist says the thermometer record is probably more accurate. Here's an interesting article on the statistics behind the thermometer data and some issues with the satellite data.
You're right that our temperature data in the 50s isn't as good as today, that's why datasets like HadCRUT4 have 100 versions which basically show the range of possible ways the data can be fitted together. It's like putting error bars on each data point but more advanced.
> The main problem with most of the graphs that's circulating (as well as the ones in the links we've scratched here) is that different methods of obtaining the data has been used within the same graph.
If they are trying to measure the same thing, it should not be a problem. More important is where the data has come from - if somebody is deliberately picking and choosing their data to get a certain result, then that's bad. If all the data has been considered fairly, then the result can be good.
If you're into paleontology, you will enjoy Donald Prothero's Evolution: What the Fossils Say and Why It Matters
I just don't believe in any near term full extinction scenarios. Humanity was thriving in every terrestrial biome with nothing but fire and stone tools. Some tiny fraction of human will survive any plausible scenarios, even if its just a handful of tribes hunting feral pigs in the subarctic.
Peter Ward is just about the most pessimistic geological scientist working today and even he posits that humans will survive (in greatly reduced numbers) almost indefinitely in a post global warming world. https://www.amazon.com/Future-Evolution-Peter-Ward/dp/0716734966
I'm sure how far back you want to start, but if you want to get into our ancient ancestors, I'd start with Before the Dawn. Follow that up with Cro-Magnon for a decent overview of the first modern human migrations into Europe. There is some overlap with After the Ice-Age, but the latter is a great resource describing the first transitions into agriculture.
The History of the Ancient World would be a good follow up; it's breadth is quite broad, starting with the ancient Sumerians and taking you up to the fall of the Roman Empire, but it's broken into small, readable chunks.
Hopefully this helps to get you started!
One I like (I've got an old edition, 1995; there maybe newer) is History of Life by Richard Cowen. I'll ask our paleontologist what book he teaches from and post the title later.
EDIT: Bringing Fossils To Life: An Introduction To Paleobiology by Prothero (expensive text, but perhaps you can find it used)
EDIT 2: I was told the 2^nd edition of Prothero isn't much different than the 1^st, but the 1^st is a lot cheaper.
Another book that is quite good and fun and about dinosaurs is Hunting Dinosaurs. I gave it as a gift to one of my tiny cousins and he loved the book.
I don't have a favorite documentary, but I will recommend the photo book Hunting Dinosaurs by Louie Psihoyos to anyone.
It's kind of dated (early 90s) but is a wonderfully written personal account of Psihoyos going around and meeting many of the great paleontologists of our time and talking about dinosaurs - alongside gorgeous photos.
Also: he somehow convinced the University of Pennsylvania to give him Edward Cope's skull and he talks about busting it out every time he met another paleontologist.
Here's one that looks close.
https://www.amazon.com/Future-Evolution-Peter-Ward/dp/0716734966
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Jedward-Our-Story-Jennifer-OBrien/dp/1843583356
http://www.amazon.com/Reef-Fish-Pocket-Identification-Book/dp/B001CTBGII
http://www.amazon.com/Missing-Links-Search-Human-Origins/dp/0199276854
I don't. So search for James Hansen, for starters. He's published quite a bit on the topic.
Edit: also Thomas Cronin, the author of this textbook. Or Michael Bender, the author of this one. But really the textbooks themselves would be the best place to start; it's a big, active field of research.
"no scientific consensus that black people are genetically predisposed to lower intelligence"
The report is by the APA from 1996. The APA in 96 to even acknowledge that there was a gap was a huge thing, considering its bias. Discoveries have ramped up in the last few years so I don't know why wikipedia is relying on sources from 94 & 96 considering the human genome mapping wasn't completed until 2003. Discoveries since then have been one after another.
It's no surprise wikipedia comes to the PC conclusion, but it suffers from problems. It acknowledges that the black-white test gap exists. Either it is genetic, or environmental. There has been decades of money, and time thrown at fixing the environment by rich billionaires like Gates, and others. Dozens upon dozens of education, nutrition, parent swapping (giving black babies to whites), and other experiments, and they all failed. There is not a single study in the world that can claim lasting gains in the IQ gap. This bit of evidence would point to a genetic basis right? That and the fact that twin studies (the only proper studies that can control for genes) shows intelligence, among other dispositions, are highly heritable. In that wikipedia page, they link to the actual numbers from the APA study: "A 1996 statement by the American Psychological Association gave about .45 for children and about .75 during and after adolescence."
Finally, does that statement even pass the laugh test? "Science" doesn't work by consensus, but if it did, wouldn't it be relevant to ask the actual scientists involved in intelligence research?
There are people with very high intelligence, very low IQ, and everyone between. Most people can recognize that height is highly heritable, but it isn't a guarantee, sometimes you are taller than your tallest parent, sometimes you are shorter than the shortest parents. Most times you regress towards the mean. The idea that the brain is a blank slate has been discredited by Steven Pinker, Noam Chomsky, and others. The brain comes with innate abilities, abilities that are partly inherited from your parents genes.
If you are actually concerned with finding the truth you can read Nicholas Wade, who writes for the NYTimes. The 10,000 Year Explosion. Or Gene Expression1. Or Gene Expression2. Rather than having your views filtered by whoever happens to be editing one of the many wikipedia pages.