Song of the EarthPub Date : 2021-08-12DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780197502464.003.0002
Elisabeth Ervin-Blankenheim
{"title":"Geology Emerges as a Science","authors":"Elisabeth Ervin-Blankenheim","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780197502464.003.0002","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780197502464.003.0002","url":null,"abstract":"This chapter and the next one cover the way in which geology came to be a science in its own right, spanning the early centuries of geology. Lives of crucial individual scientists from the sixteenth century to the beginning of the twentieth century are discussed by relating the stories and discoveries of each, commencing with Leonardo da Vinci and continuing with the European geologists, including Nicholaus Steno, Abraham Werner, James Hutton, Charles Lyell, and early fossilists such as Etheldred Benet. Steno, Werner, Hutton and Lyell, and other early geologists revealed and wrote about the basic principles of geology, painstakingly untangling and piecing together the threads of the Earth’s vast history. They made sense of jumbled sequences of rocks, which had undergone dramatic changes since they were formed, and discerned the significance of fossils, found in environments seemingly incongruous to where the creatures once lived, as ancient forms of life. They set the stage for further research on the nature of the Earth and life on it, providing subsequent generations of geologists and those who study the Earth the basis on which to refine and flesh out the biography of the Earth.","PeriodicalId":145054,"journal":{"name":"Song of the Earth","volume":"2014 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-08-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"133102293","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Song of the EarthPub Date : 2021-08-12DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780197502464.003.0008
Elisabeth Ervin-Blankenheim
{"title":"Life on the Earth","authors":"Elisabeth Ervin-Blankenheim","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780197502464.003.0008","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780197502464.003.0008","url":null,"abstract":"Change in life forms over the long span of the Earth’s history, and the theory of evolution are discussed in chapter 7. Along with the tenets of geologic time (chapters 3 and 4) and plate tectonics (chapters 5 and 6), evolution encompasses another foundational idea in geology. This chapter examines the history of evolutionary thought and theory, starting with Charles Darwin and his work on natural selection. The historic “Bone Wars” that occurred with the discovery of the dinosaur fossils is an example of how fossils are used and sometimes misused to unravel the evolution of a significant branch in the Earth’s history of life. So too, the story of horses and their ancestors is portrayed in the Cenozoic era, as early equine ancestor species responded in their body size and tooth and foot structure to changes in climate and the opening of grasslands. The number and variety of life forms waxes and wanes over geologic time, through evolution and sometimes extinction events, only to re-emerge over eons, eras, periods, and epochs, leading to pulses of biodiversity in the fossil record. The theory of evolution was forged after the work by Darwin and others by later developments in molecular biology and DNA research which support modern evolutionary theory.","PeriodicalId":145054,"journal":{"name":"Song of the Earth","volume":"194 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-08-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"133891231","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Song of the EarthPub Date : 2021-08-12DOI: 10.1017/9781108685917.003
Elisabeth Ervin-Blankenheim
{"title":"Plate Tectonics","authors":"Elisabeth Ervin-Blankenheim","doi":"10.1017/9781108685917.003","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108685917.003","url":null,"abstract":"This chapter illustrates the most significant revolution in the understanding of the Earth discovered in the last 75 years, plate tectonics. The theory of plate tectonics is the second overarching precept of the field of geology (after the geologic time scale). Plate tectonics and its history as a theory are traced in this chapter. Early explorers and others had noticed the apparent fit in the shapes of the continents, but these ideas were not explicitly stated until Alfred Wegener detailed his evidence for the drift of the continents, though he had no viable mechanism on how the drift would have occurred. World War II technology, including sonar and radar, allowed scientists to understand the ocean floor. Rather than a flat, featureless plain, they found a vast undersea mountain range known as the mid-oceanic ridge that wraps around the world like seams on a baseball. Harry Hess proposed a new mechanism for continental drift through mantle convection cells, causing seafloor spreading. These ideas were confirmed by magnetic surveys and subsequent research, leading to the theory of plate tectonics. A final section looks at the maturation of the theory as geologists continue to learn more details about the movement and intricacies of the tectonic plates.","PeriodicalId":145054,"journal":{"name":"Song of the Earth","volume":"102 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-08-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"122416127","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Song of the EarthPub Date : 2021-08-12DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780197502464.003.0011
Elisabeth Ervin-Blankenheim
{"title":"The Biography of the Earth","authors":"Elisabeth Ervin-Blankenheim","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780197502464.003.0011","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780197502464.003.0011","url":null,"abstract":"The story of the Phanerozoic Eon continues in this chapter with the Mesozoic Era. The first period in the Mesozoic, the Triassic, was bookended by two extinction events, the one at the beginning, discussed in the prior chapter at the end of the Permian Period, the Great Dying, and then another at the end of the period, related to the further breakup of Pangea. Dinosaurs evolved and diversified during the Mesozoic to occupy nearly each and every ecological niche on the planet, with large dinosaurs and small dinosaurs, ones that flew, those that ate vegetation, and those that preyed upon the herbivores—making this time a dino-dominated age. In the late Jurassic Period, small mammals, many of them insectivores, were starting to become prevalent. The era ended with a “big bang” of a different type than is theorized as the start of the universe—with the Chicxulub asteroid impact 66 million years ago that ended the lives of most of the dinosaurs, the non-avian lines, and opened up new ecological niches for the next “masters of the universe,” the mammals.","PeriodicalId":145054,"journal":{"name":"Song of the Earth","volume":"13 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-08-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"116780534","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Song of the EarthPub Date : 2021-08-12DOI: 10.4135/9781446216187.n158
Elisabeth Ervin-Blankenheim
{"title":"Geologic Time","authors":"Elisabeth Ervin-Blankenheim","doi":"10.4135/9781446216187.n158","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.4135/9781446216187.n158","url":null,"abstract":"Geologists first unraveled the geologic time scale by relative age-dating, discussed in the last chapter. Once geologists sorted out the order of rock units, subsequent advances in methodologies, detailed in this chapter, by chronometric and numerical means based on radioisotopes, other atomic measures, and quantitative techniques, were employed to measure time. Many minerals and rocks have “clocks” within them that can be used to pin down the actual age of the particular geologic sample or the age of boundaries between formal units of the geologic time scale. This chapter explains how geologists decipher those clocks and determine the ages of rocks by numerical age-dating. The history of radioisotopes is tracked, starting with Ernest Rutherford and Pierre and Marie Curie. The modern geologic time scale is depicted and expanded upon, along with why it is essential for geologic maps and how the time scale can help with people-sized problems and challenges faced on the Earth.","PeriodicalId":145054,"journal":{"name":"Song of the Earth","volume":"61 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-08-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"125871383","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Song of the EarthPub Date : 2021-08-12DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780197502464.003.0013
Elisabeth Ervin-Blankenheim
{"title":"The Earth’s Impact on Life and Life’s Impact on the Earth","authors":"Elisabeth Ervin-Blankenheim","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780197502464.003.0013","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780197502464.003.0013","url":null,"abstract":"This chapter weaves together the three threads that make up the fundamental geologic principles: geologic time, plate tectonics, and evolution. The chapter examines their impact on life on the Earth and, in turn, biological life’s imprint on the planet. Each system, or sphere, of the Earth, water, air, solid Earth, and life, are interdependent. At the intersection of these spheres are critical systems, such as soil and the carbon cycle, both of which support life. The current situation on the planet, with diminishing resources and population numbers and changes in climate, are current concerns. The interrelated web of life in response to climate change and implications for the future benefits from a deep-time perspective with geology as a framework. Past hothouse times, tipping points, and understanding how the Earth works as well as the biography of the Earth through the lens of geology, can go far as a guide to future conditions on the planet—to listen to the song of the Earth.","PeriodicalId":145054,"journal":{"name":"Song of the Earth","volume":"96 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-08-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"127085905","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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