Islands in the Cosmos: The Evolution of Life on Land (Life of the Past) - Hardcover

Russell, Dale A.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0253352738 ISBN 13: 9780253352736

Publisher: Indiana University Press, 2009

Synopsis

How is it that we came to be here? The search for answers to that question has preoccupied humans for millennia. Scientists have sought clues in the genes of living things, in the physical environments of Earth from mountaintops to the depths of the ocean, in the chemistry of this world and those nearby, in the tiniest particles of matter, and in the deepest reaches of space. In Islands of the Cosmos, Dale A. Russell traces a path from the dawn of the universe to speculations about our future on this planet. He centers his story on the physical and biological processes in evolution, which interact to favor more successful, and eliminate less successful, forms of life. Marvelously, these processes reveal latent possibilities in life's basic structure, and propel a major evolutionary theme: the increasing proficiency of biological function. It remains to be seen whether the human form can survive the dynamic processes that brought it into existence. Yet the emergence of the ability to acquire knowledge from experience, to optimize behavior, to conceptualize, to distinguish "good" from "bad" behavior all hint at an evolutionary outcome that science is only beginning to understand.

-- Indiana University Press

About this title

About the Author

Dale A. Russell is senior curator of paleontology at the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences and author of A Vanished World: The Dinosaurs of Western Canada and An Odyssey in Time: The Dinosaurs of North America.

-- Indiana University Press

Edition details

• Publisher: Indiana University Press
• Publication date: 2009
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0253352738
• ISBN 13: 9780253352736
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 480