“35 Million Years Ago, North America came into being as two long islands separated by the Bearpaw Sea. The stable east coast benefited from its own isolated evolution with small crossovers from the shallow sea. The instable West Coast was joined to Asia by the Berengian land bridge -- a causeway for Asiatic flora and fauna,” (Flannery, p. 10).
Two
Books of Continental Inspiration:
Eternal Frontier, The: An Ecological History of North American and Its Peoples (2001)By Tim Flannery, The Text Publishing Company, Melbourne, Australia, p. 404.Across the Great Divide: (1998)By James McPhee, Random House Publishing
One of the most enjoyable and yet rare
items is a science book that is both readable and informative. I present two such books for your
consideration. In The Eternal
Frontier, Tim Flannery explores the unique biodiversity and living
experience of the great North American continent -- a land he shows which has
provided a unique and readily catalogued diversity of evolutionary life over
the 65 million year period since the latest mass extinction. He begins with the story of how an ancient
meteorite ended the reign of the dinosaurs and ushered in a new age of
ascendant mammals and unique to North America, deciduous trees and specialized
flora (I greatly enjoyed is observations on the unique evolution of squirrels
and North American nut trees). On the
other hand, James McPhee takes an even longer vision of this vast space and
time, exploring the geology that cradles Flannery’s evolving life forms.
