The Next Species: The Future Of Evolution In The Aftermath Of Man - Plot & Excerpts
Life abounded in the seas back then, but the dinosaurs had yet to appear. The creatures that walked the dry land were not as enormous, nor as diversified, as they would become later. The continents were bound together in a single landmass, but as it broke up and drifted apart, the movement provided the isolation necessary for new species to evolve. Still, life had to sidestep the Permian extinction before it could truly flourish. The story of life’s decimation at this point, followed by its resurrection, has multiple lessons for our own predicament. The Capitan Reef, though long dead, once thrived between 272 and 260 million years ago in the middle of the Permian period, just before the greatest mass extinction the world has ever known. The International Union of Geological Sciences has selected three points within the park as “golden spikes,” the standard against which all other rocks of the Middle Permian period are compared. (The actual markers that indicate these points are brass plaques.) At the bottom of the trail up to the reef one day, I met Guadalupe Mountains National Park geologist Jonena Hearst.
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