The Next Species: The Future of Evolution in the Aftermath of Man (38 page)

During the Permian period this gallery of life
: Erwin,
Extinction
, 2–7.

It hasn’t been that long since man
: “Fossils and the Birth of Paleontology: Nicholas Steno,” Understanding Evolution, University of California,
http://evolution.berkeley.edu/evolibrary/article/history_04
.

The awareness of fossils grew
: “William Smith (1769–1839),” University of California Museum of Paleontology,
www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/history/smith.html
.

Geologists discovered that layers of rock in North America
: Jonathan Weiner,
The Beak of the Finch: A Story of Evolution in Our Time
(New York: Vintage Books, 1995), 109.

These upheavals presented
: Stephen Jay Gould,
The Structure of Evolutionary Theory
(Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2002), 745.

Perhaps the most famous of the five extinction events
: Leakey and Lewin,
The Sixth Extinction
, 47–56;
http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/laureates/1968/alvarez-bio.html
.

a million times more energy
: “Experts Reaffirm Asteroid Impact Caused Mass Extinction,” University of Texas at Austin,
http://www.utexas.edu/news/2010/03/04/mass_extinction/
March 4, 2010.

huge tidal waves spread
: Peter Ward,
Future Evolution: An Illuminated History of Life to Come
(New York: Times Books, 2001), 24–26.

The first vertebrates
: Author interview with Jonena Hearst; “Geological Time: The Permian; Terrestrial Animal Life and Evolution of Herbivores,” Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History,
http://paleobiology.si.edu/geotime/main/htmlversion/permian2.html
.

best studied Permian-Triassic boundary sequences in the world
: Erwin,
Extinction
, 83.

This eruption occurred about 252 million years ago
: Seth D. Burgess, Samuel Bowring, and Shu-zhong Shen, “High-precision timeline for earth’s most severe extinction,”
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
111, no. 9 (February 10, 2014), 3316–21.

The end result of the buildup of CO
₂
: Scott Lidgard, Peter J. Wagner, and Mathew A. Kosnik, “The Search for Evidence of Mass Extinction,”
Natural History
(September 2009), 26–32.

Floods skipped across the earth
: Erwin,
Extinction
, 144–45.

In a 2007 paper in
Earth and Planetary Science Letters: Andrew
H. Knoll, et al., “Paleophysiology and end-Permian mass extinction,”
Earth and Planetary Science Letters
(2007), 295–313,
www.sciencedirect.com
.

30 percent of the species of plants and animals
: Author interview with Andrew Knoll, April 24, 2012.

the arrival of man
: Guy Gugliotta, “The Great Human Migration: Why humans left their African homeland 80,000 years ago to colonize the world,”
Smithsonian
(July 2008).

2
 ORIGINAL SYNERGY

chemistry is often underrated
: William Schlesinger and Emily Bernhardt,
Biogeochemistry: An Analysis of Global Change
(Waltham, MA: Academic Press, 2013), 20–32.

“the road to life on planet Earth”
: Author interview with William Schlesinger, October 16, 2011.

Alexander Oparin independently suggested that all the ingredients for life
:
http://biology.clc.uc.edu/courses/bio106/origins.htm
.

In the 1950s, Stanley Miller
: Nick Lane,
Life Ascending: The Ten Great Inventions of Evolution
(New York: W. W. Norton, 2009), 8–33.

Possible solutions emerged
: Toshitaka Gamo, et al., “Discovery of a new hydrothermal venting site in the southernmost Mariana Arc,”
Geochemical Journal
38 (2004), 527–34.

Around the turn of the twenty-first century
: William Martin and Michael J. Russell, “On the origin of biochemistry at an alkaline hydrothermal vent,”
Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society
362 (2007), 1887–925; author phone and email interviews with Michael J. Russell, January 29, 2013.

For life to really get going
: David Bielo, “The Origin of Oxygen in Earth’s Atmosphere,”
Scientific American
(August 19, 2009),
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/origin-of-oxygen-in-atmosphere/
.

These guys promoted photosynthesis
: Lane,
Life Ascending
, 60–69.

Oxygen made the planet livable
: Fred Guterl,
The Fate of the Species: Why the Human Race May Cause Its Own Extinction and How We Can Stop It
(New York: Bloomsbury, 2012), 41–44.

life had to wait about four billion years
: “Oxygen-Free Early Oceans Likely Delayed Rise of Life on Planet,” University of California, Riverside (January 10, 2011),
http://newsroom.ucr.edu/2520
.

The Burgess Shale, the famous quarry of Cambrian life
: Leakey,
The Sixth Extinction
, 13–37.

Our first really good display of what nature was up to
: Stephen Jay Gould,
Wonderful Life: The Burgess Shale and the Nature of History
(New York: W. W. Norton, 1989), 53–70.

soft body parts
: Leakey,
The Sixth Extinction
, 15–16.

They were an odd bunch
: Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, Paleobiology, Burgess shale website:
(a)
http://paleobiology.si.edu/burgess/opabinia.html
; (b)
http://paleobiology.si.edu/burgess/amiskwia.html
; (c)
http://paleobiology.si.edu/burgess/anomalocaris.html
.

The development of vision
: Lane,
Life Ascending
, 172–205.

Animal life has grown quite larger
: Author trip in early summer 2012 to Kenya and Tanzania as a guest of Leslea Hlusko at the University of California, Berkeley, and Jackson Njau at Indiana University at Olduvai Gorge in Tanzania. Ngorongoro Basin was the first stop.

Ngorongoro Crater became
: UNESCO, Culture, World Heritage Centre, “Ngorongoro Conservation Area: Outstanding Universal Value,”
http://whc.unesco.org/en/list/39
.

Despite the government threat to shoot poachers on sight
: Jeffrey Gettleman, “Elephants Dying in Epic Frenzy as Ivory Fuels Wars and Profits,”
New York Times
, September 8, 2012,
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/04/world/africa/africas-elephants-are-being-slaughtered-in-poaching-frenzy.html
.

Males use their tusks to battle each other
: Weiner,
The Beak of the Finch
, 263.

3
 THE GROUND BELOW THE THEORIES

Beagle
rowed up to the island of San Cristóbal
: Weiner,
The Beak of the Finch
, 21–23 and 354–81.

When Darwin returned to England
: Ibid., 28–29.

William and Henry Blanford
: Ted Nield,
Supercontinent: Ten Billion Years in the Life of Your Planet
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007), 30–35.

Britain’s Captain Robert Scott
: Ibid., 64–67; Sian Flynn, “The Race to the South Pole,”
BBC History in Depth
, March 3, 2011,
http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/british/britain_wwone/race_pole_01.shtml
.

Scott’s second in command
: The National Museum: Royal Navy (UK), “Biography: Captain Robert Scott,”
Royal Naval Museum Library
, 2004.

Alfred Wegener, a German geophysicist
: Nield
, Supercontinent
, 14.

island biogeography
: Ben G. Holt, et al., “An Update of Wallace’s Zoogeographic Regions of the World,”
Science
339, no. 6115 (January 4, 2013), 74–78; UC Berkeley, “Biogeography: Wallace and Wegener,” Understanding Evolution,
http://evolution.berkeley.edu/evolibrary/article/history_16
.

considered an island for one organism
: Paul R. Ehrlich, David S. Dobkin, and Darryl Wheye, “Island Biogeography,” 1988,
https://www.stanford.edu/group/stanfordbirds/text/essays/Island_Biogeography.html
.

typical example of a landlocked island
: Michael Tennesen, “Expedition to the clouds,”
International Wildlife
28, no. 2 (March/April 1998), 22–29.

all the birds mentioned in Shakespeare’s
: Alan Weisman,
The World Without Us
(New York: Thomas Dunne Books/St. Martin’s Press, 2007), 35.

The brown tree snake
: Ker Than, “Drug-filled Mice Airdropped Over Guam to Kill Snakes,”
National Geographic News
, September 24, 2010.

Burmese pythons into Florida
: Michael Tennesen, “Python Predation: Big snakes poised to change US ecosystems,”
Scientific American
, January 20, 2010.

into the underground caverns of Powell’s Cave
: Michael Tennesen, “When Juniper and Woody Plants Invade, Water May Retreat,”
Science
322, no. 5908 (December 12, 2008), 1630–31.

thickets that don’t allow enough light
: Steve Archer, David S. Schimel, and Elizabeth A. Holland, “Mechanisms of Shrubland Expansion: Land Use, Climate of CO2,”
Climatic Change
29 (1995), 91–99.

Tallgrass Prairie Preserve near
: The Nature Conservancy, “Oklahoma Tallgrass Prairie Preserve,”
http://www.nature.org/ourinitiatives/regions/northamerica/unitedstates/oklahoma/placesweprotect/tallgrass-prairie-preserve.xml
; I attended a conference session on this at the 2011 Ecological Society of American Convention in Austin, Texas.

leaks in Boston’s underground pipelines
: Nathan Phillips, et al., “Mapping urban methane pipeline leaks: methane leaks across Boston,”
Environmental Pollution
173 (2013), 1–4.

4
 EVOLVING OUR WAY TOWARD ANOTHER SPECIES

how man developed
: Tim D. White, “Human Evolution: The Evidence,” in
Intelligent Thought: Science versus the Intelligent Design Movement
, edited by John Brockman (New York: Vintage, 2006), 65–81.

studying their teeth
: Theresa M. Grieco, et al., “A Modular Framework Characterizes Micro-and Macroevolution of Old World Monkey Dentitions,”
Evolution
67, no. 1 (January 2013), 241–59.

crocodiles and their possible effect on hominid intelligence
: Jackson K. Njau and Robert Blumenschine, “Crocodylian and mammalian carnivore feeding traces on hominid fossils from FLK 22 and FLK NN 3, Plio-Pleistocene Olduvai Gorge, Tanzania,”
Journal of Human Evolution
63, no. 2 (August 2012), 408–17.

crocodile victims would show fewer tooth marks
: Jackson K. Njau and Robert Blumenschine, “A diagnosis of crocodile feeding traces on larger mammal bone, with fossil examples from Plio-Pleistocene Olduvai Basin, Tanzania,”
Journal of Human Evolution
50, no. 2 (2006), 142–62.

In order to survive like this
: Author interviews with Jackson Njau and Leslea Hlusko, June 22–30, 2012.

Proconsul africanus
: Douglas Palmer,
Origins: Human Evolution Revealed
(London: Mitchell Beazley, 2010), 35.

Australopithecus afarensis
: Ibid., 58.

Homo habilis
: Ibid., 98.

Homo erectus
: Ibid., 119.

Homo sapiens
: Ibid., 174–76.

tool technology of early man
: Stephen S. Hall, “Last of the Neanderthals,”
National Geographic
214, no. 4 (October 2008), 38–59.

Examinations of Neanderthal
: Palmer,
Origins
, 240.

a day in the Tour de France
: Matt Allyn, “Eating for the Tour de France,”
Bicycling Magazine
, July 13, 2011,
http://www.bicycling.com/garmin-insider/featured-stories/eating-tour-de-france
.

Homo sapiens
moved up into Europe
: Palmer,
Origins
, 241.

“Homo sapiens
had the ability to develop trade”
: Author interview with Rick Potts, May 3, 2012.

“Mama,” “papa,” “cup,” and “up”
: Author interview with Rob Shoemaker, November 18, 2011.

if Bonnie had the ability to make decisions
: Chikako Suda-King, “Do orangutans (
Pongo pygmaeus
) know when they do not remember?”
Animal Cognition
11, no. 1 (2008), 21–42.

sign language and a system of lexicons
: Paul Raffaele, “Speaking Bonobo: Bonobos have an impressive vocabulary, especially when it comes to snacks,”
Smithsonian
37, no. 8 (November 2006), 74; author interview with Sue-Savage Rumbaugh, November 21, 2011.

cognitive abilities to perceive speech
: Author interview with Lisa Heimbauer, November 17, 2011.

the FOXP2 speech gene
: Elizabeth Kolbert, “Sleeping with the Enemy: What happened between the Neanderthals and us?”
The New Yorker
87, no. 24 (August 15–22, 2011), 64–75.

The town was established in 1781
: University of California, Los Angeles, “A Short History of Los Angeles,”
http://cogweb.ucla.edu/Chumash/LosAngeles.html
.