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Vanished Ocean
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Review
'Vanished Ocean' is an ideal general reader for students and those who are already widely read in natural science. (Ted Nield, Geoscientist )
A wealth of nourishing knowledge revealed through the history of Tethyan Realm. (Ted Nield, Geoscientist )
'Vanished Ocean' is an ideal book for those who are already widely read in natural science. (Ted Nield, Literary Review )
A well argued contribution to one of the great scientific debates of the last 30 years. (Jonathan Beard, New Scientist )
A wealth of nourishing knowledge revealed through the history of Tethyan Realm. (Ted Nield, Geoscientist )
'Vanished Ocean' is an ideal book for those who are already widely read in natural science. (Ted Nield, Literary Review )
A well argued contribution to one of the great scientific debates of the last 30 years. (Jonathan Beard, New Scientist )
Product Description
This is a book about an ocean that vanished six million years ago - the ocean of Tethys. Named after a Greek sea nymph, there is a sense of mystery about such a vast, ancient ocean, of which all that remains now are a few little pools, like the Caspian Sea. There were other great oceans in the history of the Earth - Iapetus, Panthalassa - but Tethys was the last of them, vanishing a mere moment (in geological terms) before Man came on the scene. Once Tethys stretched across the world. How do we know? And how could such a vast ocean vanish? The clues of its existence are scattered from Morocco to China. This book tells the story of the ocean, from its origins some 250 million years ago, to its disappearance. It also tells of its impact on life on Earth. The dinosaurs were just beginning to get going when Tethys formed, and they were long dead by the time it disappeared. Dorrik Stow describes the powerful forces that shaped the ocean; the marine life it once held and the rich deposits of oil that life left behind; the impact of its currents on environment and climate. It is rarely realized how very important oceans are to climate and environment, and therefore to life on Earth. The story of Tethys is also a story of extinctions, and floods, and extraordinary episodes such as the virtual drying up of the Mediterranean, before being filled again by a dramatic cascade of water over the straits of Gibralter. And in the telling of that story, we also learn how geologists put together the clues in rocks and fossils to discover Tethys and its history.
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17 of 17 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
This is a rare find. An excellent read, written by an expert who avoids unecessary jargon but does not shy away from the level of detail needed to communicate the issues - a major fault of most "popular science" books. Where detail is needed, Stow takes the time to spell things out clearly and concisely. Some nice greyscale or line drawing illustrations are scattered through the book and serve the text well. The style is lucid and relaxed, with a good mix of personal backstory and anecdote that properly serve the substance rather than being merely thrown in to dilute the facts in case the reader cant handle them. Indeed these help to communicate Stow's enthusism and inspiration, as well as being a nice advert for a career in academic geology: there are even a few suggestions of nice food/wine combinations if you are ever visiting the sites Stow is discussing!
Stow anchors the book around the vanished ocean of Tethys, which gives the book shape, but this allows him to cover a huge range of material beyond the bare geology, including paleoclimatology, paleobiology and extinction theories, human evolution, marine sciences and critical discussion of pertinent scientific methods. These are all explained well and integrated into a wholistic view that he communicates superbly, drawing on personal and published data from sites ranging around the world, which he takes space to discuss and bring to life vividly. There is sufficient minor repetition in the different sections to prevent constant backflicking without being irritating. He is explicit about areas of uncertainty and controversy, and presents both sides. The book is very succesful at communicating the geologic concept of deep time and just how dynamic and changeable our planet continues to be at that scale, and Stow takes space to give a nice perspective in that light on the present debate on human contributions to the current extinction crisis and recent climate change. The book covers very different but slightly overlapping ground to Tony Hallam's very good Catastrophes and Lesser Calamities: The causes of mass extinctions. If you enjoyed the wonderfully written The Humans Who Went Extinct: Why Neanderthals died out and we survived by Clive Finlayson, you will find this as well written and cogently put together.
I have a medical background obviously not in this field and I think this book is a triumph for the interested non-specialist reader, and an outstanding example of "academic popular science" if you get my gist. If you are at all interested in the history of our planet and its life, and are willing to be taken beyond irritatingly facile TV documentaries that are so prevalent, you should read this book. I took it on holiday and a chapter or so each day made a fine and more stimulating accompanyment to my other diet of fiction.
Stow anchors the book around the vanished ocean of Tethys, which gives the book shape, but this allows him to cover a huge range of material beyond the bare geology, including paleoclimatology, paleobiology and extinction theories, human evolution, marine sciences and critical discussion of pertinent scientific methods. These are all explained well and integrated into a wholistic view that he communicates superbly, drawing on personal and published data from sites ranging around the world, which he takes space to discuss and bring to life vividly. There is sufficient minor repetition in the different sections to prevent constant backflicking without being irritating. He is explicit about areas of uncertainty and controversy, and presents both sides. The book is very succesful at communicating the geologic concept of deep time and just how dynamic and changeable our planet continues to be at that scale, and Stow takes space to give a nice perspective in that light on the present debate on human contributions to the current extinction crisis and recent climate change. The book covers very different but slightly overlapping ground to Tony Hallam's very good Catastrophes and Lesser Calamities: The causes of mass extinctions. If you enjoyed the wonderfully written The Humans Who Went Extinct: Why Neanderthals died out and we survived by Clive Finlayson, you will find this as well written and cogently put together.
I have a medical background obviously not in this field and I think this book is a triumph for the interested non-specialist reader, and an outstanding example of "academic popular science" if you get my gist. If you are at all interested in the history of our planet and its life, and are willing to be taken beyond irritatingly facile TV documentaries that are so prevalent, you should read this book. I took it on holiday and a chapter or so each day made a fine and more stimulating accompanyment to my other diet of fiction.
15 of 15 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase
I read this book intending it to be light relief from my geological studies and it proved an excellent way of 'seeing the wood for the trees' as the book covers, in an engaging way, the full history of the Tethys Ocean without getting too tied down in the complex detail.
Dorrik Stow is a well known sceptic about the KT boundary being due to a single event, and he makes his case within this book, but seems to carry that sceptism through to trying to prove that the indicators for the Chicxulub bolide were caused by other events which seems to me to be unnecessary as many geologists would believe the event did occur and was additive to the environmental stresses from other causes. That minor point aside the book is an excellent read from an author with great depth of knowledge and experience meaning that the complex mechanisms involved are covered accurately but without resort to the arcane language so beloved of many geological authors.
I suppose the book will be filed in stores under 'popular science' which is an impossibly wide target audience so my 4 stars is based on my own special interest; many general readers would find it worthy of 5 stars.
Dorrik Stow is a well known sceptic about the KT boundary being due to a single event, and he makes his case within this book, but seems to carry that sceptism through to trying to prove that the indicators for the Chicxulub bolide were caused by other events which seems to me to be unnecessary as many geologists would believe the event did occur and was additive to the environmental stresses from other causes. That minor point aside the book is an excellent read from an author with great depth of knowledge and experience meaning that the complex mechanisms involved are covered accurately but without resort to the arcane language so beloved of many geological authors.
I suppose the book will be filed in stores under 'popular science' which is an impossibly wide target audience so my 4 stars is based on my own special interest; many general readers would find it worthy of 5 stars.
8 of 8 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
I enjoyed this book in every respect but the occasionally condescending anecdotes that the author regales the reader with. Apart from that it is an easily accessible, well contextualised and fairly thorough exploration of the origins, life and eventual demise of the Tethys Ocean. I am a mature undergraduate student of earth science but an interested amateur would easily assimilate this book. Overall, I would recommend it for anyone interested in this fascinating part of our planet's history.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
Absorbing
that would be a 5 star for me.
Absorbing, good balance of details, very good maps and graphs,and above all well written. Read more
Absorbing, good balance of details, very good maps and graphs,and above all well written. Read more
Published 28 days ago by Eric le rouge
Readable narrative with geological detail
Vanished Ocean by Dorrik Stow is one of those books written for general readers, including the author's personal narrative of his geological explorations interwoven with his... Read more
Published 8 months ago by Bespoke Bedsits
Vanishing Ocean
I found this book extremely irritating. It is an excellent subject and the author clearly has a lot of geological knowledge. Read more
Published 11 months ago by Carps
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