Tropical Arctic : lost plants, future climates, and the discovery of ancient Greenland
Author(s)
Bibliographic Information
Tropical Arctic : lost plants, future climates, and the discovery of ancient Greenland
University of Chicago Press, 2021
- : cloth
Available at 1 libraries
Note
Includes index
Description and Table of Contents
Description
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.
Table of Contents
List of Illustrations
Preface
1 A Journey into the Past
2 Forests of a Lost Landscape
3 Crisis and Collapse
4 Recovery of a Tropical Arctic
Acknowledgments
Appendix: A Fossil Plant Gallery
Further Reading
Index
by "Nielsen BookData"