Tropical Arctic: Lost Plants, Future Climates, and the Discovery of Ancient Greenland

ISBN: 022653443X

Author: McElwain, Jennifer

Condition: Used

An illustrated visit to the tropical arctic of 205 million years ago when Greenland was green.While todays Greenland is largely covered in ice, in the time of the dinosaurs the area was a lushly forested, tropical zone. Tropical Arctic tracks a ten-million-year window of Earths history when global temperatures soared and the vegetation of the world responded.A project over eighteen years in the making, Tropical Arctic is the result of a unique collaboration between two paleobotanists, Jennifer C. McElwain and Ian J. Glasspool, and award-winning scientific illustrator Marlene Hill Donnelly. They began with a simple question: What was the color of a fossilized leaf? Tropical Arctic answers that question and more, allowing readers to experience Triassic Greenland through three reconstructed landscapes and an expertly researched catalog of extinct plants. A stunning compilation of paint and pencil art, photos, maps, and engineered fossil models, Tropical Arctic blends art and science to bring a lost world to life. Readers will also enjoy a front-row seat to the scientific adventures of life in the field, with engaging anecdotes about analyzing fossils and learning to ward off polar bear attacks.Tropical Arctic explains our planets story of environmental upheaval, mass extinction, and resilience. By looking at Earths past, we see a glimpse of the future of our warming planet-and learn an important lesson for our time of climate change.