{"id":357,"date":"2006-08-15T02:18:08","date_gmt":"2006-08-15T06:18:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/s265039441.onlinehome.us\/philpaine\/?p=357"},"modified":"2018-08-21T22:50:21","modified_gmt":"2018-08-22T02:50:21","slug":"14735-%c2%a0%c2%a0-peter-d-edward-gorgon-%e2%80%95-paleontology-obsession-and-the-greatest-catastrophe-in-earth%e2%80%99s-history","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/?p=357","title":{"rendered":"14735.&nbsp;(Peter D. Edward) Gorgon \u2015 Paleontology, Obsession, and the Greatest Catastrophe in Earth\u2019s History"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">Edward is a pale\u00adon\u00adtol\u00ado\u00adgist who did impor\u00adtant work on the Per\u00admian Extinc\u00adtion, a peri\u00adod in Earth\u2019s his\u00adtory that seems to have under\u00adgone a cat\u00ada\u00adstro\u00adphe even more spec\u00adtac\u00adu\u00adlar than the bet\u00adter known Cre\u00adta\u00adceous mete\u00ador impact that turned the dinosaurs to toast. In the mass extinc\u00adtions that took place 248 mil\u00adlion years ago, nine\u00adty to nine\u00adty-five per\u00adcent of marine species were elim\u00adi\u00adnated, and on land a com\u00adplex pro\u00adto-mam\u00admalian fau\u00adna was wiped out.<span id=\"more-357\"><\/span> Edward\u2019s book con\u00adtains only a sim\u00adpli\u00adfied sum\u00admary of the sci\u00adence. It\u2019s pri\u00admar\u00adily auto\u00adbi\u00ado\u00adgraph\u00adi\u00adcal. He did most of his research in the Great Karoo region of South Africa, and his vis\u00adits there coin\u00adcided with dra\u00admatic peri\u00adods in South Africa. He describes the total\u00adi\u00adtar\u00adian atmos\u00adphere dur\u00ading the late Apartheid era, and then the chaot\u00adic one of the post-Apartheid era. This, and descrip\u00adtion of the phys\u00adi\u00adcal and emo\u00adtional chal\u00adlenges of doing hard sci\u00adence in the field are the rea\u00adson to read the&nbsp;book.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">[If you want to learn more about the Per\u00admi\u00adan Extinc\u00adtion Event, a good place to start is the <span style=\"color: #0000ff;\"><u><a style=\"color: #0000ff;\" href=\"http:\/\/hoopermuseum.earthsci.carleton.ca\/lobby.html\">Hoop\u00ader Vir\u00adtual Nat\u00adural His\u00adtory Muse\u00adum<\/a><\/u><\/span>, run by Carl\u00adton Uni\u00adver\u00adsity, Ottawa. It\u2019s a user-friend\u00adly site, geared to the gen\u00aderal pub\u00adlic. A sec\u00adtion devot\u00aded to \u201cCre\u00adation\u00adism\u201d makes no attempt to pussy\u00adfoot with the tide of igno\u00adrance: it begins with a primer on the four\u00adteen most com\u00admon log\u00adi\u00adcal fal\u00adlac\u00adies of argu\u00adment, straight out of Aristotle]<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Edward is a pale\u00adon\u00adtol\u00ado\u00adgist who did impor\u00adtant work on the Per\u00admian Extinc\u00adtion, a peri\u00adod in Earth\u2019s his\u00adtory that seems to have under\u00adgone a cat\u00ada\u00adstro\u00adphe even more spec\u00adtac\u00adu\u00adlar than the bet\u00adter known Cre\u00adta\u00adceous mete\u00ador impact that turned the dinosaurs to&nbsp;toast.&nbsp;\u2026<\/p>\n<p class=\"read-more\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/?p=357\">Read more \u00bb<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"wp_typography_post_enhancements_disabled":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[946,18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-357","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-b-reading","category-bu-reading-2006"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/357","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=357"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/357\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9487,"href":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/357\/revisions\/9487"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=357"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=357"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=357"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}