Cataclysms: A New Geology for the Twenty-First Century
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | 4.77 (905 Votes) |
| Asin | : | 0231177801 |
| Format Type | : | paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 224 Pages |
| Publish Date | : | 2015-01-31 |
| Language | : | English |
DESCRIPTION:
Michael R. Rampino is a professor of biology and environmental studies at New York University. He has been a consultant for NASA and is the editor of Climate: History, Periodicity, and Predictability (1988) and coauthor of Origins of Life in the Universe (2008).Michael R. Rampino is a professor of biology and environmental studies at New York Universi
(James Powell, author of Four Revolutions in the Earth Sciences: From Heresy to Truth)A very readable and broad-ranging inquiry from a personal perspective into the philosophical underpinnings of historical geology. Rampino advances the argument that catastrophism, rather than being dismissible as an arbitrary explanation of major events in the story of life on Earth, is a predictable consequence of the galactic pacing of impacts of large extraterrestrial objects, producing periodic bouts of mass extinctions.
The new geology he outlines explicitly rejects nineteenth-century “uniformitarianism,” which casts planetary change as gradual and driven by processes we can see at work today. Rampino builds on the latest findings from leading geoscientists to take “neocatastrophism” a step further, toward a richer understanding of the science behind major planetary upheavals and extinction events.Rampino recounts his conversion to the impact hypothesis, describing his visits to meteor-strike sites and his review of the existing geological record. This new geology sees Earth’s position in our solar system and galaxy as the keys to understanding our planet’s geology and history of life. Rampino offers a cosmic context for Earth’s geologic evolution, in which cataclysms from above in the form of comet and asteroid impacts and from below in the form of huge outpourings of lava in flood-basalt eruptions have led to severe and even catastrophic changes to the Earth’s surface. Scientists found evidence for this theory in a “crater of doom” on the Yucatán Peninsula, showing that our planet had once been a target in a galactic shooting gallery. Rampino concludes with a controversial