Word: fossilizing
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...animals during the Cambrian merely seemed sudden, and in fact had been preceded by a lengthy period of evolution for which the geological record was missing. But this explanation, while it patched over a hole in an otherwise masterly theory, now seems increasingly unsatisfactory. Since 1987, discoveries of major fossil beds in Greenland, in China, in Siberia, and now in Namibia have shown that the period of biological innovation occurred at virtually the same instant in geologic time all around the world...
...mesh with reality; the models said the world should now be warmer than it actually is. The reason is that the computer models had been overlooking an important factor affecting global temperatures: aerosols, the tiny droplets of chemicals like sulfur dioxide that are produced along with CO2 when fossil fuels are burned in cars and power plants. Aerosols actually cool the planet by blocking sunlight and mask the effects of global warming. Says Tom Wigley, a climatologist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research and a member of the international panel: "We were looking for the needle in the wrong...
...play down the trappings of celebrity. "People say, 'How do you do it?' I say, 'Stay away from show business,'" Crichton said earlier this month. He was driving to lunch, headed inland from the coast in one of those heavy-browed Ford things that take a lot of fossil fuel to slake. A couple of years ago, he was peeved that a Vanity Fair article said he drove a tonier, more expensive Land Rover. Then, he had marched this interviewer to the window in his office and pointed at the brawny Ford in the driveway: "Does that look like...
...Great Dying, paleontologists call it, and with good reason. No event in the fossil record--not even the catastrophe that would kill off the dinosaurs 185 million years later--was more devastating or left a greater mark on the history of life. Not just a few laggard species, but entire communities of plants and animals, even hardy insects, suddenly vanished. Among the casualties: coral reefs and all their inhabitants, dense forests of fernlike trees, giant amphibians and pred atory reptiles, and the last of the trilobites, those hard-shelled marine invertebrates with complex eyes that once dominated the prehistoric oceans...
Envious rivals railed at "Leakey's luck" in finding hominid fossils--yet of course it was not luck at all but rather a combination of energy, optimism, persistence, a superb field team--known among scientists as the "Hominid Gang"--and an intimate knowledge of his native terrain. He and Mary made many significant finds, notably the fossil of the species they named Homo habilis (handy man), the earliest known tool user. Since the death of Louis in 1972, his unwavering position that Africa was the cradle of humanity has been rewarded with universal acceptance...