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| ISBN: | 0195370120 (ISBN13: 9780195370126) |
| Edition Language: | English |
Sharon Levy
Hardcover | Pages: 255 pages Rating: 4.05 | 164 Users | 25 Reviews
List Regarding Books Once & Future Giants: What Ice Age Extinctions Tell Us about the Fate of Earth's Largest Animals
| Title | : | Once & Future Giants: What Ice Age Extinctions Tell Us about the Fate of Earth's Largest Animals |
| Author | : | Sharon Levy |
| Book Format | : | Hardcover |
| Book Edition | : | First Edition |
| Pages | : | Pages: 255 pages |
| Published | : | March 22nd 2011 by Oxford University Press, USA (first published February 17th 2011) |
| Categories | : | Nonfiction. Science. History. Environment. Nature. Geology. Palaeontology. Natural History. Animals |
Rendition In Favor Of Books Once & Future Giants: What Ice Age Extinctions Tell Us about the Fate of Earth's Largest Animals
Until about 13,000 years ago, North America was home to a menagerie of massive mammals. Mammoths, camels, and lions walked the ground that has become Wilshire Boulevard in Los Angeles and foraged on the marsh land now buried beneath Chicago's streets. Then, just as the first humans reached the Americas, these Ice Age giants vanished forever. In Once and Future Giants, science writer Sharon Levy digs through the evidence surrounding Pleistocene large animal ("megafauna") extinction events worldwide, showing that understanding this history--and our part in it--is crucial for protecting the elephants, polar bears, and other great creatures at risk today. These surviving relatives of the Ice Age beasts now face an intensified replay of that great die-off, as our species usurps the planet's last wild places while driving a warming trend more extreme than any in mammalian history. Inspired by a passion for the lost Pleistocene giants, some scientists advocate bringing elephants and cheetahs to the Great Plains as stand-ins for their extinct native brethren. By reintroducing big browsers and carnivores to North America, they argue, we could rescue some of the planet's most endangered animals while restoring healthy prairie ecosystems. Critics, including biologists enmeshed in the struggle to restore native species like the gray wolf and the bison, see the proposal as a dangerous distraction from more realistic and legitimate conservation efforts. Deftly navigating competing theories and emerging evidence, Once and Future Giants examines the extent of human influence on megafauna extinctions past and present, and explores innovative conservation efforts around the globe. The key to modern-day conservation, Levy suggests, may lie fossilized right under our feet.Rating Regarding Books Once & Future Giants: What Ice Age Extinctions Tell Us about the Fate of Earth's Largest Animals
Ratings: 4.05 From 164 Users | 25 ReviewsComment On Regarding Books Once & Future Giants: What Ice Age Extinctions Tell Us about the Fate of Earth's Largest Animals
Levy uses our fascination with giant beasts from a long gone epoch to introduce the reader to the very real and pressing concerns of todays imperiled ecosystem. The disappearance of creatures like the mammoth and the giant ground sloth hold important lessons about the role of megafauna and top predators. (And just so you arent too fooled by the books title, theres really little chance that extinct creatures can ever be brought back to life and Levy explains that it would probably be a horribleThis is by far the best book Ive found on woolly mammoths what they looked like, what they ate, how they behaved, and so. For as much as they appear in pop culture, for as much as other books reference them, there is a surprising dearth of books just about them.But Once & Future Giants isnt limited to woolly mammoths. It covers multiple types of Pleistocene megafauna (the technical term for all those big species that went extinct at the end of the Ice Age saber toothed tigers, dire wolves,
I became aware of this book only because I know the author personally, but I was genuinely surprised by the enjoyment I found in reading about a subject I wasn't even aware existed. While the text covers some fairly technical material, Sharon Levy lays it out in a manner that actually makes the information fun to learn. Although we may feel that some of the subject is theoretical, the concept is still very intriguing and, at times, captivating. I thoroughly enjoyed learning new and interesting
Like many Goodreaders, I indulge in two books at once, just as you might enjoy two dishes as part of the same meal. So if you want some poetry to read alongside Levy's Once and Future Giants, I recommend Mary Olivers American Primitive.We have two takes on the primitive here - Levy argues that bringing back the primitive (i.e. big non-human carnivores) can restore balance to our prairies. She gently mocks those who would nurture wild horses but not their predators. -- "The threat of a hungry
Beginning with the stately mastodon of North America, in chapters that move from continent to continent Sharon Levy documents what we know about prehistoric and ancient megafauna: how they lived, how they influenced their environments with respect to other fauna and flora, and ultimately how they died. She describes the ways in which the loss of top predators in many biomes today is having an enormous and unanticipated tumble-down effect, resulting in devastating losses of biodiversity. She also
As far as I'm concerned, this is the definitive layman's book to date about megafauna. I was just a little girl when I saw my first Pleistocene megafauna skeleton in a natural history museum. I had gone past it numerous times in the past offhandedly labeling it dinosaur, but one day stopped to actually read the plaquard: Giant Sloth. And my love of megafauna was born. It is true these beasts are awesome in a poetic, romantic sense, and stir the imagination just as deeply as dinosaurs. Our
The main message I got out of this book is just how complex trying to restore working ecosystems to the modern world will be. There are so many possible interactions between humans, megafauna, plants, and climate that might occur. The most important thing is to keep researching how successful ecosystems work and how humans can be integrated into them without damaging them.
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