Future Evolution

Those familiar with "The Future is Wild" series based on the Dougal Dixon book of the same name will find a starkly different version of future evolution here. Whereas Dixon's Future is Wild posits a future voluntarily abdictated by man leaving other creatures to fill the evolutionary void, Ward's future is one of desolation where man cotinues to reign, albeit with a diminishing small number of species left to join him. The reason for such global catastrophie? Man's own abuse of his environment says Ward who notes that some eighty percent of megammamals worldwide have been brought to extinction in the past 20000 years owing to man's plunder. Aside from domesticated animals Ward sees rats, snakes and weeds as the likely beneficiaries of a world dominated by man. Interestingly Ward and his artist collaborator Alexis Rockman draw out family trees of these creatures showing the various ways in which they may come to differentiate to occupy their various ecological niches. Throuh it all he sees a mankind, safe from extinction owing to his sheer numbers and mastery of the environment around him. On the one hand the picture is optimistic in that it posits long years of survival by mankkind. On the other hand, the picture is bleak, basically of a species forced to live the consequences of its misdeeds and lay in its own bed for a very long time. While obviously the future itself will alone ultimately reveal its secrets Ward's book is terrifying glimpse of would could be. Everyone wonders what tomorrow holds, but what will the real future look like? Not decades or even hundreds of years from now, but thousands or millions of years into the future. Will our species change radically? Or will we become builders of the next dominant intelligence on Earth- the machine? These and other seemingly fantastic scenarios are the very possible realities explored in Peter Ward's Future Evolution, a penetrating look at what might come next in the history of the planet. Looking to the past for clues about the future, Ward describes how the main catalyst for evolutionary change has historically been mass extinction. While many scientist direly predict that humanity will eventually create such a situation, Ward argues that one is already well underway--the extinction of large mammals--and that a new Age of Humanity is coming that will radically revise the diversity of life on Earth. Finally, Ward examines the question of human extinction and reaches the startling conclusion that the likeliest scenario is not our imminent demise but long term survival--perhaps reaching as far as the death of the Sun! Full of Alexis Rockman's breathtaking color images of what animals, plants and other organisms might look like thousands and millions of years from now, Future Evolution takes readers on an incredible journey through time from the deep past into the far future. "Thousands or millions of years into the future, what will our species be like? Will it change radically? Or will we become builders of the next dominant intelligence on Earth - the machines?". "These and many other seemingly fantastic scenarios are the very real possibilities explored in Peter Ward's Future Evolution, a penetrating look at what might come next in the history of the planet. Looking to the past for clues about the future, Ward describes how the main catalyst for evolutionary change has historically been mass extinction. While many scientists gloomily predict that humanity will eventually create such a situation, Ward argues that one is already well under way - the extinction of large mammals - and that a new age of humanity is coming that will radically revise the diversity of life on Earth. Finally, Ward examines the question of human extinction and reaches the starting conclusion that the likeliest scenario is not our imminent demise but long-term survival - perhaps reaching as far as the death of the Sun."--BOOK JACKET. Describing mass extinction as the primary catalyst for evolutionary change throughout our planet's history, the author argues that we are well into the extinction phase of the Age of Megamammals and that future evolution will be seriously hampered by the lack of species diversity. He also predicts humankind's evolving alongside machines, in company with genetically altered plants that will infest the world as weeds and cloned animal species devoid of any evolutionary spark