Greenhouse of the Dinosaurs: Evolution, Extinction, and the Future of Our Planet

626 Pages·2009·11.72 MB·English

by  Donald R. Prothero

DONALD R. PROTHERO
Greenhouse of the Dinosaurs
EVOLUTION, EXTINCTION, AND THE
FUTURE OF OUR PLANET
Columbia University Press New York
Columbia University Press Publishers Since 1893
New York Chichester, West Sussex cup.columbia.edu
Copyright © 2009 Columbia University Press All rights reserved E-ISBN 978-0-231-51832-1
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Prothero, Donald R.
Greenhouse of the dinosaurs: evolution, extinction, and the future of our planet / Donald R.
Prothero.; illustrated by Carl Buell.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-231-14660-9 (cloth : alk. paper) ISBN 978-0-231-51832-1 (e-book) 1. Dinosaurs—
Extinction. 2. Climatic changes—Environmental aspects. 3. Geology—United States. 4.
Paleontology—United States. I. Title.
QE861.6.E95P76 2009
576.8′4—dc22
2008052555
A Columbia University Press E-book.
CUP would be pleased to hear about your reading experience with this e-book at cup-
[email protected].
Designed by Lisa Hamm
References to Internet Web sites (URLs) were accurate at the time of writing. Neither the author
nor Columbia University Press is responsible for URLs that may have expired or changed since
the manuscript was prepared.
Frontispiece: Dinosaur Cove in the Cretaceous. (Painting by P. Trusler, used with permission)
To the memory of two great paleontologists
who changed our profession forever:

Malcolm Carnegie McKenna (1930–2008)
and
Stephen Jay Gould (1941–2002)
| Contents
Preface
Acknowledgments
1 | Greenhouse of the Dinosaurs
2 | Bad Lands, Good Fossils
3 | Magnets and Lasers
4 | “Punk Eek” in the Badlands
5 | Death of the Dinosaurs
6 | Marine World
7 | Rocky Mountain Jungles and Eels’ Ears
8 | From Greenhouse to Icehouse
9 | Once and Future Greenhouse?
10 | Kids, Dinosaurs, and the Future of Paleontology
Bibliography
Index
| Preface
May you live in interesting times.
—old chinese proverb Popular science writing has come a long way since the days of Charles Darwin and
Loren Eiseley. Today, the public seems ever more ignorant of science at a time when science literacy is
crucial to making public-policy decisions about medicine, the environment, and many other issues. In
particular, science is seen as something impersonal and dehumanized, largely due to the scientific tradition
of eliminating the observer from the narrative. In scientific publications, the writer must avoid first-person
pronouns and use the passive voice, as if the discoveries happened all by themselves, and the human
element were unnecessary.
As all good scientists know, however, science is very much a human
activity, subject to trends and fads. It is influenced by the culture in which
it arises. It is not a cold, impersonal search for what is “out there” beyond
the human realm. Science is also a very social activity, from the give and
take and camaraderie of professional societies and meetings to the strict
gauntlet of peer review to the acrimonious debates over hot topics and
controversial ideas. Scientists must go through a long, brutal ordeal
known as graduate school to earn their degrees that qualify them for
admission into their professions and then through an even longer process
in which they must “publish or perish” not only to obtain tenure and job
security, but to prove their scientific mettle and keep active by
discovering new things that other scientists will consider worthwhile. To
me, it is as important to inform the public about this aspect of science as
it is to publicize our conclusions and discoveries. In recent years, we’ve
seen a trend for more and more popular science writing to inject this
human element and to tell not only the scientific story, but also the social
background behind the discoveries, or the writer’s own narrative of how
he or she was involved in the discovery process. As indicated by sales
figures, readers of popular and trade science books apparently enjoy and
appreciate this approach because it helps to humanize what is often seen
to be a cold and impersonal process.
This book is my own attempt to inject the human side of the
profession into the story of the research topics I have had the great
fortune to be involved in over the past 40 years. I started out as a kid who
loved dinosaurs, but by graduate school I found myself in the center of
debates about mass extinctions, tempo and mode of evolution, the
geologic timescale, and the great transition from greenhouse of the
dinosaurs to our present icehouse planet. I also benefited from
interactions with some extraordinary scientists and had the opportunity to
work on amazing scientific problems. I was trained at a time of incredible
intellectual ferment and even revolutionary transformation in my field. In
that respect, I was very fortunate, and I hope that this tale of these
“interesting times” will engage the reader as much as my profession has
fascinated me.