What Bugged the Dinosaurs?
eBook - ePub

What Bugged the Dinosaurs?

Insects, Disease, and Death in the Cretaceous

  1. 280 pages
  2. English
  3. ePUB (mobile friendly)
  4. Available on iOS & Android
eBook - ePub

What Bugged the Dinosaurs?

Insects, Disease, and Death in the Cretaceous

Book details
Table of contents
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About This Book

Millions of years ago in the Cretaceous period, the mighty Tyrannosaurus rex--with its dagger-like teeth for tearing its prey to ribbons--was undoubtedly the fiercest carnivore to roam the Earth. Yet as What Bugged the Dinosaurs? reveals, T. rex was not the only killer. George and Roberta Poinar show how insects--from biting sand flies to disease-causing parasites--dominated life on the planet and played a significant role in the life and death of the dinosaurs.
The Poinars bring the age of the dinosaurs marvelously to life. Analyzing exotic insects fossilized in Cretaceous amber at three major deposits in Lebanon, Burma, and Canada, they reconstruct the complex ecology of a hostile prehistoric world inhabited by voracious swarms of insects. The Poinars draw upon tantalizing new evidence from their amazing discoveries of disease-producing vertebrate pathogens in Cretaceous blood-sucking flies, as well as intestinal worms and protozoa found in fossilized dinosaur excrement, to provide a unique view of how insects infected with malaria, leishmania, and other pathogens, together with intestinal parasites, could have devastated dinosaur populations.
A scientific adventure story from the authors whose research inspired Jurassic Park, What Bugged the Dinosaurs?? offers compelling evidence of how insects directly and indirectly contributed to the dinosaurs' demise.

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Information

Publisher
Princeton University Press
Year
2010
ISBN
9781400835690
Topic
Biological Sciences
Subtopic
Biology
Index
Biological Sciences

Table of contents

  1. Cover Page
  2. Title Page
  3. Copyright
  4. Dedication
  5. Contents
  6. Preface
  7. Acknowledgments
  8. Introduction
  9. Chapter 1: Fossils: A Time Capsule
  10. Chapter 2: The Cretaceous: A Time of Change
  11. Chapter 3: Herbivory
  12. Chapter 4: Dinosaurs Competing with Insects
  13. Chapter 5: Did Dinosaurs or Insects “Invent” Flowering Plants?
  14. Chapter 6: Pollination
  15. Chapter 7: Blights and Diseases of Cretaceous Plants
  16. Chapter 8: The Cretaceous: Age of Chimeras and Other Oddities
  17. Chapter 9: Sanitary Engineers of the Cretaceous
  18. Chapter 10: The Case for Entomophagy among Dinosaurs
  19. Chapter 11: Gorging on Dinosaurs
  20. Chapter 12: Biting Midges
  21. Chapter 13: Sand Flies
  22. Chapter 14: Mosquitoes
  23. Chapter 15: Blackflies
  24. Chapter 16: Horseflies and Deerflies
  25. Chapter 17: Fleas and Lice
  26. Chapter 18: Ticks and Mites
  27. Chapter 19: Parasitic Worms
  28. Chapter 20: The Discovery of Cretaceous Diseases
  29. Chapter 21: Diseases and the Evolution of Pathogens
  30. Chapter 22: Insects: The Ultimate Survivors
  31. Chapter 23: Extinctions and the K/T Boundary
  32. Plates
  33. Appendix A: Cretaceous Hexapoda
  34. Appendix B: Key Factors Contributing to the Survival of Terrestrial Animals
  35. Appendix C: Problems with Evaluating the Fossil Record and Extinctions
  36. References
  37. Index