A01=Alan Graham
americas
Author_Alan Graham
biological
biology
botanists
botany
Category=PST
Category=RBX
Category=RNC
climate
community
cretaceous
ecological
ecology
ecosystems
environment
environmental
environmentalism
eocene
eq_bestseller
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_science
evolution
evolutionary
fossils
geology
historical
ice ages
landscapes
miocene
natural history
new world
paleobotany
paleoecological
paleoecology
plants
pliocene
science
scientific
time periods
vegetation
Product details
- ISBN 9780226306797
- Weight: 765g
- Dimensions: 16 x 24mm
- Publication Date: 01 Dec 2010
- Publisher: The University of Chicago Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Hardback
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The paleoecological history of the Americas is as complex as the region is broad: stretching from the Arctic Circle to Tierra del Fuego, the New World features some of the most extraordinary vegetation on the planet. But until now it has lacked a complete natural history. Alan Graham remedies that with "A Natural History of the New World". With plants as his scientific muse, Graham traces the evolution of ecosystems, beginning in the Late Cretaceous period (about 100 million years ago) and ending in the present, charting their responses to changes in geology and climate. By highlighting plant communities' roles in the environmental history of the Americas, Graham offers an overdue balance to natural histories that focus exclusively on animals. Plants are important in evolution's splendid drama. Not only are they conspicuous and conveniently stationary components of the Earth's ecosystems, but their extensive fossil record allows for a thorough reconstruction of the planet's paleoenvironments. What's more, plants provide oxygen, function as food and fuel, and provide habitat and shelter; in short, theirs is a history that can speak to many other areas of evolution.
"A Natural History of the New World" is an ambitious and unprecedented synthesis written by one of the world's leading scholars of botany and geology.
Alan Graham is curator of paleobotany and palynology at the Missouri Botanical Garden.
