When Humans Nearly Vanished: The Catastrophic Explosion of the Toba VolcanoSmithsonian Institution, 16. 10. 2018 - Počet stran: 208 The fascinating true story of the explosion of the Mount Toba supervolcano--the Earth's largest eruption in the past 28 million years--and its lasting impact on Earth and human evolution Some 73,000 years ago, the huge dome of Mount Toba, in today's Sumatra, Indonesia, began to rumble. A deep vibration shook the entire island. Jets of steam and ash emanated from the summit, followed by an explosion louder than any sound heard by Homo sapiens since our species evolved on Earth. The eruption of the Toba supervolcano released the energy of a million tons of explosives; seven hundred cubic miles of magma spewed outward in an explosion forty times larger than the largest hydrogen bomb and more than a thousand times as powerful as the Krakatau eruption in 1883. So much ash and debris was injected into the stratosphere that it partially blocked the sun's radiation and caused global temperatures to drop by five to nine degrees. It took a full decade for Earth to recover to its pre-eruption temperatures. When Humans Nearly Vanished presents the controversial argument that the Toba catastrophe nearly wiped out the human race, leaving only about a thousand to ten thousand breeding pairs of humans worldwide. Human genes today show evidence of a "genetic bottleneck," an effect seen when a population of organisms becomes so small that their genetic diversity is greatly reduced. This group of survivors could be the ancestors of all humans alive today. Donald R. Prothero explores the geological and biological evidence supporting the Toba bottleneck theory; reveals how the explosion itself was discovered; and offers insight into how the world changed afterward and what might happen if such an eruption occurred today. Prothero's riveting account of this calamitous supervolcanic explosion is not to be missed. |
Další vydání - Zobrazit všechny
When Humans Nearly Vanished: The Catastrophic Explosion of the Toba Volcano Donald R. Prothero Náhled není k dispozici. - 2018 |
When Humans Nearly Vanished: The Catastrophic Explosion of the Toba Volcano Donald R. Prothero Náhled není k dispozici. - 2018 |
Běžně se vyskytující výrazy a sousloví
acid Africa ancestors animals anthropologists apes Asia Australopithecus bones bottleneck brain caldera catastrophe caused chimpanzees chimps climate cloud cooling crater Crick cubic kilometers dated dinosaurs discovery earth earthquakes erectus Eurasia evidence explosion extinction events fossils genes genetic genome Geological geologists gorillas happened hominins Homo sapiens huge human fossils Ice Age ice cores impact Indonesia island Java K-P boundary killed km³ known Krakatau lahars Lake lava Leakey lineages lived look magma mammals mass extinctions meters mi² mi³ million years ago million years old modern humans molecular molecular clock Mount Pelée Mount Saint Helens mountain Neanderthals nearly ocean Olduvai orangutans paleontologist Paranthropus percent Piltdown produced protein pyroclastic flows Ramapithecus rocks Saint-Pierre samples scientists sequence showed skull species specimens square kilometers stratosphere suggests sulfuric Sumatra supervolcano Tambora teeth tion Toba eruption tsunamis Tuff volcanic ash volcano Watson