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基本説明
New in paperback. Hardcover was published in 1997. Sixty-five million years ago, a comet or asteroid larger than Mt. Everest slammed into the Earth. The story of the scientific detective work that went into solving the mystery is told by geologist Walter Alvarez.
Full Description
Sixty-five million years ago, a comet or asteroid larger than Mount Everest slammed into the Earth, inducing an explosion equivalent to the detonation of a hundred million hydrogen bombs. Vaporized detritus blasted through the atmosphere upon impact, falling back to Earth around the globe. Disastrous environmental consequences ensued: a giant tsunami, continent-scale wildfires, darkness, and cold, followed by sweltering greenhouse heat. When conditions returned to normal, half the plant and animal genera on Earth had perished. This horrific chain of events is now widely accepted as the solution to a great scientific mystery: what caused the extinction of the dinosaurs? Walter Alvarez, one of the Berkeley scientists who discovered evidence of the impact, tells the story behind the development of the initially controversial theory. It is a saga of high adventure in remote locations, of arduous data collection and intellectual struggle, of long periods of frustration ended by sudden breakthroughs, of friendships made and lost, and of the exhilaration of discovery that forever altered our understanding of Earth's geological history.
Contents
Foreword ix Preface xix CHAPTER 1Lapidum Historia Mundi 19 CHAPTER 3: Gradualist versus Catastrophist 43 CHAPTER 4: Iridium 59 CHAPTER 5: The Search for the Impact Site 82 CHAPTER 6: The Crater of Doom 106 CHAPTER 7: The World after Chicxulub 130 Notes 147 Index 171
