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Catastrophes and Lesser Calamities: The Causes of Mass Extinctions
 
 
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Catastrophes and Lesser Calamities: The Causes of Mass Extinctions [Hardcover]

Tony Hallam (Author)
4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)

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Product details

  • Hardcover: 288 pages
  • Publisher: Oxford University Press (13 May 2004)
  • Language English
  • ISBN-10: 0198524978
  • ISBN-13: 978-0198524977
  • Product Dimensions: 17.4 x 12 x 2.4 cm
  • Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 754,505 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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A. Hallam
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Product Description

Review

"This book is a very welcome contribution to popular works on science."--Choice

Times Literary Supplement, Friday 9 September 2005

A compelling book... --This text refers to the Paperback edition.
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Inside This Book (Learn More)
First Sentence
When the subject of extinctions in the geological past comes up, nearly everyone's thoughts turn to dinosaurs. Read the first page
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Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
I purchased a series of books around this subject some specific and some general. I am glad that, by luck, I read this book first. It is not as entertaining as the others but gives a balanced and well written explanation of the tools and techniques used to test and reject hypothesis in these areas of research covering huge time spans. Although I am not an expert in this area I found the explanations precise and readable. It puts the other books I am now reading into perspective and allows the reader to make a reasonable judgement as to the bias being used to place one theory before another. The book does not really give any definitive conclusion other than stating how the science is used and in part extrapolated. It was just what I needed to give me a balanced view of the other materials I was researching.
examples of teh other books I am reading are as follows.The Emerald Planet: How plants changed Earth's historyFrozen Earth: The Once and Future Story of Ice AgesThe Two-Mile Time Machine: Ice Cores, Abrupt Climate Change, and Our Future: Ice Cores, Abrupt Climate Change and Our FutureWhen Life Nearly Died: The Greatest Mass Extinction of All Time
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
A well constructed and well explained read that enables the relative layman to grasp the scientific arguments and evidence behind the determination of extinction events.As an amateur fossil collector with the same fondness as Hallam for the Toarcian event as evidenced around Whitby, I found myself looking anew at the rock strata and recognising the evidence instead of rock bashing - at least for a while - and the book evokes a sense of transience for the human race in the staggering geological timescales and events contemplated.
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Firstly, if you're thinking of a career in/studying geology, then this is a book you should certainly read, written by an obvious expert. For the layman, however, there are a few too many specific terms (jargon). Although it's clear that these are required, and the author does well to explain them first, it pushes the book into academia and lessens its accessability.
The author explains the evidence we've got concisely and is very careful not to guess. This makes most of the text quite dry, which you only really notice in the last chapter because it's there that he lets himself go a little and gets passionate about how humans may be causing the sixth mass extinction.
So, for the student: an excellent introduction to this very complex subject; for the layman, very informative but be prepared to concentrate.
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