Johns Hopkins University Press
The Rise of Marine Mammals: 50 Million Years of Evolution
Key Metrics
- Annalisa Berta
- Johns Hopkins University Press
- Hardcover
- 9781421423258
- 11.2 X 8.7 X 0.7 inches
- 2.2 pounds
- Science > Life Sciences - Biology
- English
Secure TransactionBook Description
Marine mammals have long captured the attention of humans. Ancient peoples etched seals and dolphins on the walls of Paleolithic caves; today, engineers develop microprocessors to track these denizens of the deep. This groundbreaking book from highly respected marine mammal paleontologist Annalisa Berta delves into the story of the extraordinary adaptations that gave the world these amazing animals. The Rise of Marine Mammals reveals remarkable fossil record discoveries that shed light on the origins, relationships, and diversification of marine mammals.
Focusing on evolution and paleobiology, Berta provides an overview of marine mammal species diversity, enhanced with gorgeous life restorations by Carl Buell, Robert Boessenecker, William Stout, and Ray Troll and extensive line drawings by graphics editor James L. Sumich. The book also considers ongoing conservation challenges, demonstrating how the fossil record of adaptation in response to past environmental shifts may illuminate the way that marine mammals respond to global climate change. This invaluable evolutionary framework is essential for helping us understand how best to protect and conserve today's polar bears, whales, dolphins, seals, and fellow warm-blooded ocean dwellers.
The Rise of Marine Mammals also describes exciting breakthroughs that rely on new techniques of study, including 3-D imaging, and molecular, finite element, and morphometric analyses, which have enhanced scientists' understanding of everything from the anatomy of fetal whales to the genes behind limb loss in cetaceans. Mammalogists, paleontologists, and marine scientists will find Berta's insights absorbing, while developmental and molecular biologists, geneticists, and ecologists exploring integrative research approaches will benefit from her fresh perspective.
Author Bio
Annalisa Berta is professor of biology at San Diego State University, where she specializes in the evolutionary biology of marine mammals, especially baleen whales. Berta is coauthor of Marine Mammals, Third Edition: Evolutionary Biology and author of Return to the Sea: The Life and Evolutionary Times of Marine Mammals. She lives in San Diego, CA.
Source: University of Chicago Press
San Diego State University biologist Annalisa Berta has been elected by a council of her peers as a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), a prestigious honor recognizing her many contributions to the study of the evolutionary biology of marine mammals.
Berta received her Ph.D. in paleontology from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1979, then did post-doctoral work at the University of Florida. She came to SDSU in 1982 as a lecturer teaching human anatomy. At the time, her research expertise was mostly in terrestrial carnivores, but a research trip to the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. changed the course of her career.
There, she was asked to help study a fossil seal and she became intrigued with marine mammals. In the decades since she joined SDSU as a tenure-track faculty member in 1989, Berta has published numerous highly cited studies and a handful of books for both academic and popular audiences. While her earlier marine mammal work focused on pinnipeds (seals, sea lions and walruses), she earned distinction in the field with her later studies of whale anatomy and evolution.
Source: San Diego State University
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