2017年9月24日
地质类
Early Theories of Continental Drift
| 2017年9月24日 | |
参考阅读：
The idea that the past geography of Earth was different from today is not new. The earliest maps showing the east coast of South America and the west coast of Africa probably provided people with the first evidence that continents may have once been joined together, then broken apart and moved to their present positions.
During the late nineteenth century, Austrian geologist Eduard Suess noted the similarities between the Late Paleozoic plant fossils of India, Australia, South Africa, and South America. The plant fossils comprise a unique group of plants that occurs in coal layers just above the glacial deposits on these southern continents. In this book The Face of the Earth (1885), he proposed the name “Gondwanaland” (called Gondwana here) for a supercontinent composed of the aforementioned southern landmasses. Suess thought these southern continents were connected by land bridges over which plants and animals migrated. Thus, in his view, the similarities of fossils on these continents were due to the appearance and disappearance of the connecting land bridges.
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Attempts at Determining Earth’s Age
参考阅读：
Since the dawn of civilization, people have been curious about the age of Earth. In addition, we have not been satisfied in being able to sate merely the relative geologic age of a rock or fossil. Human curiosity demands that we know actual age in years.
Geologists working during the nineteenth century understood rock bodies, they would have to concentrate on natural processes that continue at a constant rate and that also leave some sort of tangible record in the rocks. Evolution is one such process, and geologist Charles Lyell (1797-1875) recognized this. BY comparing the amount of evolution exhibited by marine mollusks then, Lyell estimated that 80 million years had elapsed since the beginning of the Tertiary Period. He came astonishingly close to the mark, since it was actually about 65 million years. However, for older sequence of evolutionary development, estimates based on parts in the fossil record. Rates of evolution for many orders of plants and animals were not well understood.
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How Soil is Formed
Earth’s Energy Cycle
Thermal Stratification
天文类Surface Fluids on Venus and Earth
环境类
The Climate of Japan
经济类
Effects of the Commercial Revolution
文化艺术类
The Origins of Writing
The Development of Printing
考古类
Environmental Impact of the Anasazi
The Chaco Phenomenon
科学类
The Birth of Photography
农业类
Agricultural Society in Eighteenth- Century British America
社会类
Population Growth in Nineteenth-Century Europe
生物类
Extinctions at the End of the Cretaceous
The Cambrian Explosion
Constraints on Natural Selection