Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-r5fsc Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-27T11:33:01.591Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Strange Old World - Late Paleocene—Early Eocene Climatic and Biotic Events in the Marine and Terrestrial Record. Edited by Marie-Pierre Aubry, Spencer Lucas, and William Berggren Columbia University Press, New York. 1998. 513 pages.

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 April 2016

William C. Clyde
William C. Clyde*
Affiliation:
Department of Earth Sciences, University of New Hampshire, Durham, New Hampshire 03824-3589. E-mail: [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

In his 1932 book Brave New World, Aldous Huxley laid out a satirical blueprint of a future so strange to people of the time that it became a symbol of the frightening and unyielding momentum of scientific progress. Literature and popular culture have since been littered with images of a future earth so transformed by human progress (or extraterrestrial intervention) that we can hardly recognize it. Earth historians and paleontologists, however, have taken a different path into the bizarre. This group of time travelers has used the kind of technology that Huxley foreshadowed to recreate past worlds of similar disparity. These worlds are neither based on, nor entirely limited by, human imagination, but are based instead on scientific observation. In short, these strange old worlds are real, not imagined. As often is the case, however, truth can b e stranger than fiction.

Type
Book Review
Information
Paleobiology , Volume 25 , Issue 3 , Summer 1999 , pp. 417 - 423
Copyright
Copyright © The Paleontological Society 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Literature Cited

Aubry, M.-P., Berggren, W. A., Stott, L., and Sinha, A. 1996. The upper Paleocene–lower Eocene stratigraphic record and the Paleocene/Eocene boundary carbon isotope excursion: implications for geochronology. Pp. 353–380in Correlation of the early Paleogene in northwest Europe. Knox, R. W. O., Corfield, R. M., and Dunay, R. E., eds. Geological Society Special Publication No. 101, London.Google Scholar
Butler, R. 1995. When did India hit Asia? Nature 373:20–21.Google Scholar
Clyde, W. C., and Gingerich, P. D. 1998. Mammalian community response to the latest Paleocene thermal maximum: an isotaphonomic study in the northern Bighorn Basin, Wyoming. Geology 26:1011–1014.2.3.CO;2>CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Graham, R. W., Lundelius, E. L. Jr., Graham, M. A., Schroeder, K., Toomey, R. S. III, Anderson, E., Barnosky, A. D., Burns, J. A., Churcher, C. S., Grayson, D. K., et al. 1996. Spatial response of mammals to late Quaternary environmental fluctuations. Science 272:1601–1606Google Scholar
Prothero, D. R., and Berggren, W. A., eds. 1992. Eocene–Oligocene climatic and biotic evolution. Princeton University Press, Princeton, N.J.Google Scholar
Kelly, D. C., Bralower, T. J., and Zachos, J. C. 1998. Evolutionary consequences of the latest Paleocene thermal maximum for tropical planktonic foraminifera. Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology 141:139–161.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Thomas, E. and Shackleton, N. J. 1996. The Paleocene–Eocene benthic foraminiferal extinction and stable isotope anomalies. Pp. 401–441in Correlation of the early Paleogene in northwest Europe. Knox, R. W. O., Corfield, R. M., and Dunay, R. E., eds. Geological Society Special Publication No. 101, London.Google Scholar
Zachos, J. C., Lohmann, K. C., Walker, J. C. G., and Wise, S. W. 1993. Abrupt climate change and transient climates during the Paleogene: a marine perspective. Journal of Geology 101:191–213.Google Scholar