Skeletons: The Frame of Life

Description

Over half a billion years ago life on earth took an incredible step in evolution, when animals learned to build skeletons. Using many different materials, from calcium carbonate and phosphate, and even silica, to make shell and bone, they started creating the support structures that are now critical to most living forms, providing rigidity and strength. Manifesting in a vast variety of forms, they provided the framework for sophisticated networks of life that fashioned the evolution of Earth's oceans, land, and atmosphere. Within a few tens of millions of years, all of the major types of skeleton had appeared. Skeletons enabled an unprecedented array of bodies to evolve, from the tiniest seed shrimp to the gigantic dinosaurs and blue whales. The earliest bacterial colonies constructed large rigid structures - stromatolites - built up by trapping layers of sediment, while the mega-skeleton that is the Great Barrier Reef is big enough to be visible from space. The skeletons of millions of coccolithophores that lived in the shallow seas of the Mesozoic built the white cliffs of Dover. These, and insects, put their scaffolding on the outside, as an exoskeleton, while vertebrates have endoskeletons. Plants use tubes of dead tissue for rigidity and transport of liquids - which in the case of tall trees need to be strong enough to extend 100 m or more from the ground. Others simply stitch together a coating from mineral grains on the seabed. In Skeletons, Jan Zalasiewicz and Mark Williams explore the incredible variety of the skeleton innovations that have enabled life to expand into a wide range of niches and lifestyles on the planet. Discussing the impact of climate change, which puts the formation of some kinds of skeleton at risk, they also consider future skeletons, including the possibility that we might increasingly incorporate metal and plastic elements into our own, as well as the possible materials for skeleton building on other planets. COVER......Page 1 SKELETONS: THE FRAME OF LIFE......Page 4 COPYRIGHT......Page 5 DEDICATION......Page 6 CONTENTS......Page 8 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS......Page 10 PROLOGUE......Page 12 1: SKELETONS APPEAR......Page 18 The First True Skeletons......Page 19 Attack of the Soft Animals......Page 22 An Eruption of Skeletons......Page 25 Harder and Softer Skeletons......Page 29 Primordial Skeletons of Lilliput?......Page 35 2: A SHELL ON THE OUTSIDE......Page 38 How Big is Big?......Page 39 Armour-Plated Animals......Page 43 Humpty Dumpty World......Page 44 Rise of the Planet of the Arthropods......Page 49 The Enduring Ostracods......Page 55 The Exoskeleton Invasion of Land......Page 58 The Seashells......Page 61 Jet-Propelled Exoskeletons......Page 66 Skeleton of the Argonauts......Page 69 The Building Trade......Page 72 The Slow Road to Success......Page 75 3: A SHELL ON THE INSIDE......Page 77 The Armoured Fish......Page 78 The Earliest Vertebrates......Page 83 The Strangest Teeth......Page 84 Building Blocks of a Skeleton......Page 88 Tooth and Jaw, but Not Yet Claw......Page 89 Half Fish, Half Tetrapod......Page 94 Amphibians to Amniotes......Page 98 The ‘Not Quite Dinosaurs’ of the Permian......Page 99 Enter the Dinosaurs......Page 101 A Question of Size......Page 103 Reclaiming the Seas......Page 104 The Making of the Modern Skeleton......Page 108 A New Skeleton Diversity......Page 110 All Fours to Upright......Page 111 The Roots of Human Abundance......Page 113 From Hand to Mouth......Page 116 The ‘Hedgehog Skin’ Animals......Page 118 The Shape-Shifters......Page 121 4: PLANT SKELETONS......Page 125 Early Days......Page 128 The River Revolution......Page 133 The Moving Plant Skeletons......Page 136 The Grit in Grass......Page 141 5: MEGA-SKELETONS......Page 144 The Coral Skeleton......Page 146 The Wider Reef......Page 150 The Deeper Reef......Page 153 The Larger Frameworks......Page 156 Bivalve Reefs of the Cretaceous......Page 158 The Ancient Reefs of the Palaeozoic......Page 161 6: MINI-SKELETONS......Page 166 A World Unseen......Page 167 The ‘Ur Animals’......Page 169 An Amoeba within a Shell......Page 170 Challenging Times......Page 173 Ancient Mysteries and Whirling Dervishes......Page 177 Plankton in Glasshouses......Page 181 The Coccospheres......Page 186 7: FLYING SKELETONS......Page 191 Flying Kites......Page 192 Arthropods in the Air......Page 194 From Pterosaurs to Terror Birds......Page 197 The Birds......Page 205 Back to the Land: the Terror Birds......Page 206 Flying Mammals......Page 208 8: SKELETON ARCHIVES......Page 212 A Mollusc for all Seasons......Page 214 The Saw-tooth Foraminifera......Page 218 The Return of the Giant Tortoises......Page 222 Keeping Time in the Devonian......Page 226 The Warm Seas of the Ordovician......Page 228 Skeleton Coasts......Page 231 The Long Sleep of the Antarctic......Page 237 A Brief Royal Epilogue......Page 239 9: FUTURE SKELETONS......Page 242 Preparation for a Sequel......Page 245 Bones of the Sequel......Page 247 The Next Reef Gap?......Page 248 Designer Skeletons......Page 251 Augmented Bones......Page 255 Do-It-Yourself Skeletons......Page 258 10: SKELETONS ON ALIEN PLANETS......Page 262 Eozoön, or the Proto-skeleton That Wasn’t......Page 265 Micro-skeletons on Mars?......Page 268 Living Rocks?......Page 269 Living Stromatolites......Page 271 Martian Stromatolites?......Page 274 Diversifying Extraterrestrial Skeletons......Page 276 Chapter 2......Page 280 Chapter 4......Page 281 Chapter 8......Page 282 Chapter 10......Page 283 Chapter 1......Page 284 Chapter 3......Page 285 Chapter 4......Page 286 Chapter 7......Page 287 Chapter 9......Page 288 Chapter 10......Page 289 FIGURE CREDITS......Page 290 INDEX......Page 292