The Earth After Us: What Legacy Will Humans Leave in the Rocks? PDF
Preview The Earth After Us: What Legacy Will Humans Leave in the Rocks?
Th e Earth After Us This page intentionally left blank Th e Earth After Us What Legacy Will Humans Leave in the Rocks? Jan Zalasiewicz with contributions from Kim Freedman 1 3 Great Clarendon Street, Oxford ox dp Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide in Oxford New York Auckland Cape Town Dar es Salaam Hong Kong Karachi Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Nairobi New Delhi Shanghai Taipei Toronto With offi ces in Argentina Austria Brazil Chile Czech Republic France Greece Guatemala Hungary Italy Japan Poland Portugal Singapore South Korea Switzerland Th ailand Turkey Ukraine Vietnam Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries Published in the United States by Oxford University Press Inc., New York © Jan Zalasiewicz 2008 Th e moral rights of the authors have been asserted Database right Oxford University Press (maker) First published 2008 All rights reserved. No part of this publication maybe reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law,or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above You must not circulate this book in any other binding or cover and you must impose the same condition on anyacquirer British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Data available Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Data available Printed in Great Britain on acid-free paper by CPI Antony Rowe, Chippenham, Wiltshire ISBN 978–0–19–921497–6 1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2 To my parents, and to the late John Norton of Ludlow Museum. Th ey provided the start. This page intentionally left blank Contents Acknowledgements viii Geological timeline x Prologue xiii 1 Perspective 1 2 100 Million Years AD 7 3 Th e Strata Machine 13 4 Tectonic Escalator 37 5 High Water, Low Water 59 6 Dynasties 87 7 Echoes 119 8 Traces 159 9 Body of Evidence 191 10 Meeting the People 219 Further Reading 243 Index 247 vii Acknowledgements Th is book has been an unconscionably long—almost geological—time in the writing. I’d like to thank, fi rst, Gabrielle Walker, then at New Scientist, who encouraged an early essay on this theme (also written with contribu- tions from Kim Freedman, who has a rare skill at bringing palaeontology to life). Gabrielle encouraged further forays into this kind of writing, as did Jimmy Leach at the Education Guardian and Phil Donoghue at the Paleon- tological Association. Latha Menon’s editing of this book at OUP was done with great skill and tact (gently removing those baroque sections that I would otherwise have deeply regretted subsequently); the overall shape of this book owes much to her. Her colleagues at OUP (too numerous to mention individually: I little realised how complex a business is the publish- ing of a book) were likewise all a pleasure to work with. Th e whole or parts of this book have been read by my colleagues includ- ing Roy Clements, Peter Friend, John Hudson, Adrian Rushton, Alan Smith, Alex Page, Kip Jeff rey and Ryszard Kryza, while Andy Gale also gave advice on an early draft of one particularly intricate section. Th eir corrections of my unforced errors, and suggestions for additions and amendments, were invaluable—though they hold no responsibility for the content, and espe- cially for the more speculative parts of it. Th e blame there is mine alone. Th e idea was to explain the workings of the science of stratigraphy through the future of humankind and of the fruits of its industry. Whether or not this has worked will be for you, the reader, to decide. More generally, my writing was shaped through the tradition of re- peated editing at the British Geological Survey. Th ere was Tony Bazley’s precision and patience in my early days, for instance; one gets it right, even- tually. Adrian Rushton, peerless in the infi nitely complex world of strati- graphical palaeontology and also in fi nding the mot juste, was endlessly encouraging, as was Tony Reedman in wider aspects of geology. As regards viii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS the science itself, my colleagues down the years—perhaps in particular those with whom I have investigated rocks old and young and those of the Stratigraphy Commission of the Geological Society of London—have provided me with an indispensable and urbane education in this most misunderstood of subjects. So too have the colleagues—Mike Branney, Sarah Gabbott, Mark Williams et al.—with whom I work at the University of Leicester’s Department of Geology. Elsewhere, Barrie Rickards has been a mainstay of graptolite science for me and many others, Ryszard Kryza has been a marvellous guide to these rocks that have endured far too much history, Karel de Pauw has continually kept me informed about science beyond geology, while the late Harry Leeming’s infl uence as regards schol- arship sensu lato was profound. My wife Kasia and son Mateusz bore the time-devouring monster that is book-writing with great fortitude, and more (Mat’s input into the cover picture, for instance). Crucially, they gave me the gift of a whole, uninter- rupted summer’s month in which I could fi nally wrestle this thing to the ground. I hope that, to them, it was worth it. ix
Description:The list of books you might like
