An illustrated visit to the tropical arctic of 205 million years ago
when Greenland was green.
While today's Greenland is largely covered in ice, in the time of the
dinosaurs the area was a lushly forested, tropical zone. Tropical
Arctic tracks a ten-million-year window of Earth's history when global
temperatures soared and the vegetation of the world responded.
A project over eighteen years in the making, Tropical Arctic is the
result of a unique collaboration between two paleobotanists, Jennifer C.
McElwain and Ian J. Glasspool, and award-winning scientific illustrator
Marlene Hill Donnelly. They began with a simple question: "What was the
color of a fossilized leaf?" Tropical Arctic answers that question and
more, allowing readers to experience Triassic Greenland through three
reconstructed landscapes and an expertly researched catalog of extinct
plants. A stunning compilation of paint and pencil art, photos, maps,
and engineered fossil models, Tropical Arctic blends art and science
to bring a lost world to life. Readers will also enjoy a front-row seat
to the scientific adventures of life in the field, with engaging
anecdotes about analyzing fossils and learning to ward off polar bear
attacks.
Tropical Arctic explains our planet's story of environmental upheaval,
mass extinction, and resilience. By looking at Earth's past, we see a
glimpse of the future of our warming planet--and learn an important
lesson for our time of climate change.
