Gorgon: Paleontology, Obsession, and the Greatest Catastrophe in Earth's History

294 Pages·2004·3.62 MB·English

by  Peter Ward

G O R G ON

ALSO BY PETER D.WARD
The Life and Death of Planet Earth
Rivers in Time
Rare Earth
Time Machines
The Call of Distant Mammoths
The End of Evolution
On Methuselah's Trail
In Search of Nautilus
The Natural History of Nautilus
A gorgonopsian by Alexis Rockman, 9" x a", acrylic and Permian sediment on paper.
Collection of Dorothy Spears.
G O R G ON
Paleontology, Obsession, and the
Greatest Catastrophe in Earth's History
Peter D. Ward
VIKING
VIKING
Published by the Penguin Group
Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, U.S.A.
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Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R ORL, England
First published in 2004 by Viking Penguin, a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 21
Copyright © Peter Ward, 2004
All rights reserved
Photographs by the author
Frontispiece: A gorgonopsian by Alexis Rockman, 9" x 12", acrylic and Permian sediment
on paper. Collection of Dorothy Spears.
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
Ward, Peter Douglas
Gorgon : paleontology, obsession, and the greatest catastrophe in earth's history / Peter
Ward.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-670-03094-5
1. Catastrophes (Geology). 2. Geology, Stratigraphic—Permian. 3. Geology, Structural—
South Africa—Karoo. I. Title.
QE674.W37 2004
576.8'4—dc21 2003047953
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For Christine

Preface
Near the southern margin of the African continent, a ringwall of
mountains holds up a vast interior desert known as the Great
Karoo. It is far from anywhere, in both space and time. The Karoo
is a Lost World.
In the Khoikhoi language, Karoo means "land of thirst." It is a
broad plateau that is either too hot or too cold for human comfort
and always too dry; a place where water is a rarity and where
your skin dries and ages even at night. The Karoo is a region
where it can snow in summer yet where the temperature can
reach more than a hundred degrees Fahrenheit on the shortest
day of winter. On some days the Karoo will require you to drink
four liters of water, and even then you will never urinate, so rap
idly does the furnacelike heat suck moisture from your body; yet
the very next day the Karoo can deliver the glacial cold that is but
a premonition of death's long future sovereignty.
It is a land where incessant wind coats all with a new daily
layer of dust, where each craggy rock in a land filled with them
may harbor a Cape cobra, or khals, or puff adder, the venomous
serpents of the Karoo that will strike without warning and leave
your flesh rotting for months afterward, assuming that you can
get to an antivenin serum in time to survive the bite. The Karoo is
a place where scorpions and poisonous spiders abound, where a
thousand varieties of flies seek to feed on you, loving your eyes
x i