Donald R. Prothero's science books combine leading research with
first-person narratives of discovery, injecting warmth and familiarity
into a profession that has much to offer nonspecialists. Bringing his
trademark style and wit to an increasingly relevant subject of concern,
Prothero links the climate changes that have occurred over the past 200
million years to their effects on plants and animals. In particular, he
contrasts the extinctions that ended the Cretaceous period, which wiped
out the dinosaurs, with those of the later Eocene and Oligocene epochs.
Prothero begins with the "greenhouse of the dinosaurs," the
global-warming episode that dominated the Age of Dinosaurs and the early
Age of Mammals. He describes the remarkable creatures that once
populated the earth and draws on his experiences collecting fossils in
the Big Badlands of South Dakota to sketch their world. Prothero then
discusses the growth of the first Antarctic glaciers, which marked the
Eocene-Oligocene transition, and shares his own anecdotes of excavations
and controversies among colleagues that have shaped our understanding of
the contemporary and prehistoric world.
The volume concludes with observations about Nisqually Glacier and other
locations that show how global warming is happening much quicker than
previously predicted, irrevocably changing the balance of the earth's
thermostat. Engaging scientists and general readers alike, Greenhouse
of the Dinosaurs connects events across thousands of millennia to make
clear the human threat to natural climate change.
