A short history of nearly everything - Bill Bryson [257]
20 “It was, truly, a mass extinction . . .” Fortey, Life, p. 235.
21 “Estimates for the number of animal species alive . . .” Gould, Hen's Teeth and Horse's Toes, p. 340.
22 “For individuals the death toll could be much higher . . .” Powell, Night Comes to the Cretaceous, p. 143.
23 “Grazing animals, including horses, were nearly wiped out . . .” Flannery, The Eternal Frontier, p. 100.
24 “At least two dozen potential culprits . . .” Earth, “The Mystery of Selective Extinctions,” October 1996, p. 12.
25 “tons of conjecture and very little evidence. . . .” New Scientist, “Meltdown,” August 7, 1999.
26 “Such an outburst is not easily imagined . . .” Powell, Night Comes to the Cretaceous, p. 19.
27 “The KT meteor had the additional advantage . . .” Flannery, The Eternal Frontier, p. 17.
28 “Why should these delicate creatures . . .” Flannery, The Eternal Frontier, p. 43.
29 “In the seas it was much the same story.” Gould, Eight Little Piggies, p. 304.
30 “Somehow it does not seem satisfying . . .” Fortey, Life, p. 292.
31 “could well be known as the Age of Turtles.” Flannery, The Eternal Frontier, p. 39.
32 “Evolution may abhor a vacuum . . .” Stanley, p. 92.
33 “For perhaps as many as ten million years . . .” Novacek, Time Traveler, p. 112.
34 “guinea pigs the size of rhinos . . .” Dawkins, The Blind Watchmaker, p. 102.
35 “a gigantic, flightless, carnivorous bird . . .” Flannery, The Eternal Frontier, p. 138.
36 “built in 1903 in Pittsburgh . . .” Colbert, p. 164.
37 “came from only about three hundred specimens . . .” Powell, Night Comes to the Cretaceous, pp. 168–69.
38 “There is no reason to believe . . .” BBC Horizon, “Crater of Death,” first broadcast May 6, 2001.
39 “Humans are here today because . . .” Gould, Eight Little Piggies, p. 229.
CHAPTER 23 THE RICHNESS OF BEING
1 “The spirit room alone holds fifteen miles of shelving . . .” Thackray and Press, The Natural History Museum, p. 90.
2 “forty-four years after the expedition had concluded.” Thackray and Press, p. 74.
3 “still to be found on many library shelves . . .” Conard, How to Know the Mosses and Liverworts, p. 5.
4 “The tropics are where you find the variety . . .” Len Ellis interview, Natural History Museum, London, April 18, 2002.
5 “he sifted through a bale of fodder . . .” Barber, p. 17.
6 “To the parts of one species of clam . . .” Gould, Leonardo's Mountain of Clams and the Diet of Worms, p. 79.
7 “Love comes even to the plants.” Quoted by Gjertsen, p. 237; and at University of California/UCMP Berkeley website.
8 “Linnaeus lopped it back to Physalis angulata . . .” Kastner, p. 31.
9 “The first edition of his great Systema Naturae . . .” Gjertsen, p. 223.
10 “John Ray's three-volume Historia Generalis Plantarum . . .” Durant and Durant, p. 519.
11 “a kind of father figure to British naturalists.” Thomas, Man and the Natural World, p. 65.
12 “gullibly accepted from seamen and other imaginative travelers.” Schwartz, Sudden Origins, p. 59.
13 “he saw that whales belonged with cows . . .” Schwartz, p. 59.
14 “mare's fart, naked ladies, twitch-ballock . . .” Thomas, pp. 82–85.
15 . . . “Edward O. Wilson in The Diversity of Life . . .” Wilson, The Diversity of Life, p. 157.
16 “transferred, amid howls, to the genus Pelargonium .” Elliott, The Potting-Shed Papers, p. 18
17 “Estimates range from 3 million to 200 million.” Audubon, “Earth's Catalogue,” January–February 2002, and Wilson, The Diversity of Life, p. 132.
18 “as much as 97 percent . . .” Economist, “A Golden Age of Discovery,” December 23, 1996, p. 56.
19 “he estimated the number of known species of all types . . .” Wilson, The Diversity of Life, p. 133.
20 “Other authorities have put the number . . .” U.S. News and World Report, August 18, 1997, p. 78.
21 “It took Groves four decades to untangle everything . . .” New Scientist, “Monkey Puzzle,” October 6, 2001, p. 54.
22 “about fifteen thousand new species of all types . . .” Wall Street Journal, “Taxonomists Unite to Catalog Every Species, Big and Small,” January