Several times in the distant past, catastrophic extinctions have swept
the Earth, causing more than half of all species--from single-celled
organisms to awe-inspiring behemoths--to suddenly vanish and be replaced
by new life forms. Today the rich diversity of life on the Earth is
again in grave danger--and the cause is not a sudden cataclysmic event
but rather humankind's devastation of the environment. Is life on our
planet teetering on the brink of another mass extinction? In this
absorbing new book, acclaimed paleontologist Peter D. Ward answers this
daunting question with a resounding yes.
Elaborating on and updating Ward's previous work, The End of
Evolution, Rivers in Time delves into his newest discoveries. The
book presents the gripping tale of the author's investigations into the
history of life and death on Earth through a series of expeditions that
have brought him ever closer to the truth about mass extinctions, past
and future. First describing the three previous mass extinctions--those
marking the transition from the Permian to the Triassic periods 245
million years ago, the Triassic to the Jurassic 200 million years ago,
and the Cretaceous to the Tertiary 65 million years ago--Ward assesses
the present devastation in which countless species are coming to the end
of their evolution at the hand of that wandering, potentially
destructive force called Homo sapiens.
The book takes readers to the Philippine Sea, now eerily empty of life,
where only a few decades of catching fish by using dynamite have
resulted in eviscerated coral reefs--and a dramatic reduction in the
marine life the region can support. Ward travels to Canada's Queen
Charlotte Islands to investigate the extinctions that mark the boundary
between the Triassic and Jurassic periods. He ventures also into the
Karoo desert of southern Africa, where some of Earth's earliest land
life emerged from the water and stood poised to develop into mammal
form, only to be obliterated during the Permian/Triassic extinction.
Rivers of Time provides reason to marvel and mourn, to fear and hope,
as it bears stark witness to the urgency of the Earth's present
predicament: Ward offers powerful proof that if radical measures are not
taken to protect the biodiversity of this planet, much of life as we
know it may not survive.
