|
|
|
Luis and Walter Alvarez
Luis
(1911-1988)
and Walter Alvarez
(1940-)
were a father and son team
who publicized that a layer of iridium (a rare element that mostly comes
from asteroids) rich clay,
had been found worldwide at rocks marking the ending of the
Cretaceous period
(the K-T boundary). This iridium layer is supportive of the
asteriod impact extinction
theory.
Previously, Luis Alvarez had won a Nobel Prize
(1968)
for his other work
on subatomic physics.
Related Information & Resources
See Also
Related Books
Here are some books from Amazon.com:
Disclosure: Products details and descriptions provided by Amazon.com. Our company may receive a payment if you purchase products from them after following a link from this website.
By Walter Alvarez
Princeton University Press
Paperback (216 pages)
 | List Price: $16.95*
Lowest New Price: $8.95*
Lowest Used Price: $4.27*
Usually ships in 24 hours*
*(As of 15:19 Pacific 3 Feb 2012 More Info)
Click Here | Product Description:
Sixty-five million years ago, a comet or asteroid larger than Mt. Everest slammed into the Earth, causing an explosion equivalent to the detonation of a hundred million hydrogen bombs. Vaporized impactor and debris from the impact site were blasted out through the atmosphere, falling back to Earth all around the globe. Terrible environmental disasters ensued, including a giant tsunami, continent-scale wildfires, darkness, and cold, followed by sweltering greenhouse heat. When conditions returned to normal, half the genera of plants and animals on Earth had perished. This horrific story is now widely accepted as the solution to a great scientific murder mystery what caused the extinction of the dinosaurs? In T. rex and the Crater of Doom, the story of the scientific detective work that went into solving the mystery is told by geologist Walter Alvarez, one of the four Berkeley scientists who discovered the first evidence for the giant impact. It is a saga of high adventure in remote parts of the world, of patient data collection, of lonely intellectual struggle, of long periods of frustration ended by sudden breakthroughs, of intense public debate, of friendships made or lost, of the exhilaration of discovery, and of delight as a fascinating story unfolded. Controversial and widely attacked during the 1980s, the impact theory received confirmation from the discovery of the giant impact crater it predicted, buried deep beneath younger strata at the north coast of the Yucatán Peninsula. The Chicxulub Crater was found by Mexican geologists in 1950 but remained almost unknown to scientists elsewhere until 1991, when it was recognized as the largest impact crater on this planet, dating precisely from the time of the great extinction sixty-five million years ago. Geology and paleontology, sciences that long held that all changes in Earth history have been calm and gradual, have now been forced to recognize the critical role played by rare but devastating catastrophes like the impact that killed the dinosaurs.
|
|
By David E. Fastovsky
Cambridge University Press
Hardcover (485 pages)
 | List Price: $104.00*
Lowest New Price: $53.89*
Lowest Used Price: $10.00*
Usually ships in 24 hours*
*(As of 15:19 Pacific 3 Feb 2012 More Info)
Click Here | Product Description:
Written for non-specialists, this detailed survey of dinosaur origins, diversity, and extinction is designed as a series of successive essays covering important and timely topics in dinosaur paleobiology, such as "warm-bloodedness," birds as living dinosaurs, the new, non-flying feathered dinosaurs, dinosaur functional morphology, and cladistic methods in systematics. Its explicitly phylogenetic approach to the group is that taken by dinosaur specialists. The book is not an edited compilation of the works of many individuals, but a unique, cohesive perspective on Dinosauria. Lavishly illustrated with hundreds of new, specially commissioned illustrations by John Sibbick, world-famous illustrator of dinosaurs, the volume includes multi-page drawings as well as sketches and diagrams. First edition Hb (1996): 0-521-44496-9 David E. Fastovsky is Professor of Geosciences at the University of Rhode Island. Fastovsky, the author of numerous scientific publications dealing with Mesozoic vertebrate faunas and their ancient environments, is also scientific co-Editor of Geology. He has undertaken extensive fieldwork studying dinosaurs and their environments in Montana, North Dakota, Arizona, Mexico, and Mongolia. David B. Weishampel is a professor at the Center for Functional Anatomy and Evolution at Johns Hopkins University, School of Medicine. Weishampel is best known for discovering, researching, and naming several rare European dinosaur species. During the 1980s Weishampel gained fame for his work with American paleontologist Jack Horner and later named the famous plant-eating, egg-laying Orodromeus, Horner. Now, a decade after his pioneering studies with Horner, Weishampel is most widely known for his current work on the Romanian dinosaur fauna. He is the author and co-author of many titles, including The Dinosaur Papers, 1676-1906 (Norton, 2003); The Dinosauria, (University of California, 1990); and Dinosaurs of the East Coast, (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996). |
|
Springer
Hardcover (384 pages)
 | List Price: $159.00*
Lowest New Price: $107.80*
Lowest Used Price: $104.59*
Usually ships in 24 hours*
*(As of 15:19 Pacific 3 Feb 2012 More Info)
Click Here | Product Description:
This book examines an important and growing issue among ecologists, conservation biologists, and archaeologists, namely recent extinction of species, and will focus on treatments of losses thought to have been caused by humans in some way over the past 40,000 years when Homo sapiens spread worldwide. There is an exemplary list of leading figures in this debate, and the book should have impact for the debate on current conservation issues and biodiversity. |
|
Island Press
Paperback (461 pages)
 | List Price: $45.00*
Lowest New Price: $24.00*
Lowest Used Price: $3.00*
Usually ships in 9 to 10 days*
*(As of 15:19 Pacific 3 Feb 2012 More Info)
Click Here | Product Description:
"Endangered Species Recovery" presents case studies of prominent species recovery programs in an attempt to explore and analyze their successes, failures, and problems, and to begin to find ways of improving the process. It is the first effort to engage social scientists as well as biologists in a wide-ranging analysis and discussion of endangered species conservation, and provides valuable insight into the policy and implementation framework of species recovery programs. The book features a unique integration of case studies with theory, and provides sound, practical ideas for improving endangered species policy implementation. |
|
By Douglas H. Erwin
Princeton University Press
Hardcover (320 pages)
 | List Price: $24.95*
Lowest New Price: $9.99*
Lowest Used Price: $4.18*
*(As of 15:19 Pacific 3 Feb 2012 More Info)
Click Here | Product Description:
Some 250 million years ago, the earth suffered the greatest biological crisis in its history. Around 95% of all living species died out--a global catastrophe far greater than the dinosaurs' demise 65 million years ago. How this happened remains a mystery. But there are many competing theories. Some blame huge volcanic eruptions that covered an area as large as the continental United States; others argue for sudden changes in ocean levels and chemistry, including burps of methane gas; and still others cite the impact of an extraterrestrial object, similar to what caused the dinosaurs' extinction.Extinction is a paleontological mystery story. Here, the world's foremost authority on the subject provides a fascinating overview of the evidence for and against a whole host of hypotheses concerning this cataclysmic event that unfolded at the end of the Permian. After setting the scene, Erwin introduces the suite of possible perpetrators and the types of evidence paleontologists seek. He then unveils the actual evidence--moving from China, where much of the best evidence is found; to a look at extinction in the oceans; to the extraordinary fossil animals of the Karoo Desert of South Africa. Erwin reviews the evidence for each of the hypotheses before presenting his own view of what happened.Although full recovery took tens of millions of years, this most massive of mass extinctions was a powerful creative force, setting the stage for the development of the world as we know it today. |
|
By David M. Raup
W. W. Norton & Company
Paperback (240 pages)
 | List Price: $14.95*
Lowest New Price: $7.60*
Lowest Used Price: $0.24*
Usually ships in 24 hours*
*(As of 15:19 Pacific 3 Feb 2012 More Info)
Click Here | Product Description:
"David Raup is, to put it baldly and justly, the world's most brilliant paleontologist."-Stephen Jay Gould Nemesis is the name given by scientists to a (theoretical) small companion star to our sun. Every 26 million years, Nemesis's orbit brings it close enough to the sun to bombard our solar system with billions of comets. While most of the comets will float harmlessly beyond the outer planets, some passing through the sun's Oort Cloud will be deflected by its gravitational force toward Earth. Such a "large-body impact," the Nemesis theory holds, was responsible for the mass extinction that led to the demise of the dinosaurs. The next impact, millions of years from now, might very well extinguish humanity. In this lively, fascinating, and often disturbing book, updated and revised with the latest scientific evidence on terrestrial impacts, David M. Raup re-explores the controversies of the Nemesis theory from the trenches of the scientific community, and investigates the issues-both scientific and philosophical-of mass extinction. "A fascinating insider's view of scientists at work-and at odds-on the issues of extinction, evolution, and the fate of dinosaurs."-John Noble Wilford |
|
By Ernst Mayr
Basic Books
Released: 2002-10-15
Paperback (336 pages)
 | List Price: $17.99*
Lowest New Price: $5.45*
Lowest Used Price: $3.32*
Usually ships in 24 hours*
*(As of 15:19 Pacific 3 Feb 2012 More Info)
Click Here | Product Description:
At once a spirited defense of Darwinian explanations of biology and an elegant primer on evolution for the general reader, What Evolution Is poses the questions at the heart of evolutionary theory and considers how our improved understanding of evolution has affected the viewpoints and values of modern man.Science Masters Series |
|
By Leslie Hutchinson
Gale
Digital (2 pages)
| List Price: $2.90*
Lowest New Price: $2.90*
Available for download now*
*(As of 15:19 Pacific 3 Feb 2012 More Info)
Click Here | Product Description:
This digital document is an article from Science and Its Times, brought to you by Gale®, a part of Cengage Learning, a world leader in e-research and educational publishing for libraries, schools and businesses. The length of the article is 599 words. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser. The histories of science, technology, and mathematics merge with the study of humanities and social science in this interdisciplinary reference work. Essays on people, theories, discoveries, and concepts are combined with overviews, bibliographies of primary documents, and chronological elements to offer students a fascinating way to understand the impact of science on the course of human history and how science affects everyday life. Entries represent people and developments throughout the world, from about 2000 B.C. through the end of the twentieth century. |
|
By Walter; Erle G. Kauffman; Finn Sulyk, Luis W. Alvarez, Frank Asaro, and Helen V. Michel Alvarez
Science
Paperback
| |
|
By Luis W Alvarez
National Academy of Sciences
Unknown Binding (59 pages)
| |
|
Discuss This Page
Linking to This Page
We do hope that you find this site useful.
We welcome people linking to this website, or citing us in their school and educational projects
(remember in school projects and papers, you should always cite your sources).
|
|
|
