Frozen Fauna of the Mammoth Steppe: The Story of Blue Babe

Frozen mammals of the Ice Age, preserved for millennia in the tundra, have been a source of fascination and mystery since their first discovery over two centuries ago. These mummies, their ecology, and their preservation are the subject of this compelling book by paleontologist Dale Guthrie. The 1979 find of a frozen, extinct steppe bison in an Alaskan gold mine allowed him to undertake the first scientific excavation of an Ice Age mummy in North America and to test theories about these enigmatic frozen fauna.

The 36,000-year-old bison mummy, coated with blue mineral crystals, was dubbed "Blue Babe." Guthrie conveys the excitement of its excavation and shows how he made use of evidence from living animals, other Pleistocene mummies, Paleolithic art, and geological data. With photographs and scores of detailed drawings, he takes the reader through the excavation and subsequent detective work, analyzing the animal's carcass and its surroundings, the circumstances of its death, its appearance in life, the landscape it inhabited, and the processes of preservation by freezing. His examination shows that Blue Babe died in early winter, falling prey to lions that inhabited the Arctic during the Pleistocene era.

Guthrie uses information gleaned from his study of Blue Babe to provide a broad picture of bison evolutionary history and ecology, including speculations on the interactions of bison and Ice Age peoples. His description of the Mammoth Steppe as a cold, dry, grassy plain is based on an entirely new way of reading the fossil record.

That's what a bare-bones summary of this book would be, but that doesn't do it justice. In a clear, readable (but not grammar-school) style, Guthrie wanders through related subjects such as frozen mammoths, the ecology and behavior of "Ice-Age" steppe bison, wild horses, mammoths and even Alaskan lions, and how Blue Babe probably looked in life -- and makes them fascinating.

Readers may have trouble understanding chapters 8 and 9 of this book if they haven't read "Paleoecology of Beringia", another out-of-print gem which anthologizes the work of several paleontologists. Guthrie is a proponent of the "Mammoth Steppe" theory, which holds that during the Pleistocene most of Alaska and Siberia were not covered by soggy tundra or coniferous trees but by a cold, dry steppe or brushland that could support mammoths, horses, bison and other large grazers. In these two chapters, he turns away from Blue Babe to tackle and refute the objections raised by two other scientists in "Paleoecology..." (successfully, in my non-scientist opinion).

I suspect most readers will find this the dullest part of the book, but it's hard to discuss the big animals of the Pleistocene without talking about why they could exist then but are extinct or much rarer in our warmer modern world.

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Oxonium ions in organic chemistry
Hartwig Perst
Manufacturer: Academic Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Unknown Binding

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Oxonium Ions in Organic Chemistry
Hartwig Perst
Manufacturer: Academic Press Inc.,U.S.
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000OH2W6O

Finite Elemente für Ingenieure 2: Variationsrechnung, Energiemethoden, Näherungsverfahren, Nichtlinearitäten, Numerische Integrationen

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Finite Elemente für Ingenieure 2: Variationsrechnung, Energiemethoden, Näherungsverfahren, Nichtlinearitäten, Numerische Integrationen
Josef Betten
Manufacturer: Springer
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 3540204474

Dieses zweibändige Lehrwerk führt systematisch und fundiert in die Finite-Element-Methoden für die Kontinuumsmechanik ein. Es geht damit weit über das traditionelle Anwendungsgebiet innerhalb der Strukturmechanik hinaus und zeigt auf, wie analytisch nicht oder nur unbefriedigend behandelbare Probleme innerhalb der Elasto-, Plasto- und Kriechmechanik, der Fluidmechanik, der Wärmeübertragung, aber auch der Elektrotechnik numerisch gelöst werden können.

Der zweite Band behandelt die fortgeschrittenen Methoden. In die 2. Auflage neu aufgenommen wurde die numerische Integration mit zahlreichen Beispielen. Erweitert wurde auch der Übungs- und Lösungsteil mit den Lösungen auf CD-ROM.

Angesprochen werden Studierende des Maschinenbaus und des Bauingenieurwesens sowie in der Praxis tätige Ingenieure.

Classic Spanish Stories and Plays : The Great Works of Spanish Literature for Intermediate Students

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Very high quality
Painless short intro to Spanish lit
Great Intro To Spanish Literature & Culture
A Perfect Aid To Learning Spanish
Great book for intermediate students of the Spanish language

Classic Spanish Stories and Plays : The Great Works of Spanish Literature for Intermediate Students
Marcel C. Andrade
Manufacturer: McGraw-Hill
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0658011383

Spanning El Cid (1140) to El burlador de Sevilla (1630), Classic Spanish Stories and Plays contains eight great Spanish classics works including Don Quixote, one of the masterpieces of world literature. Expertly abridged and adapted for the intermediate learner, each tale and play includes ample cultural notes and translations of difficult words. An extensive vocabulary is included at the back of the book.

It has classic short stories and plays that are very entertaining. But the best thing about the book is that it offers definitions of obscure words on the same page (at the bottom, out of the way of the rest of the text), and all less obscure words are included in a dictionary in the back of the book. So, I can sit down and read this book without having to constantly refer to a Spanish dictionary; I can take this book along with me anywhere just like any other book in English.

The only downside is that the stories aren't the originals - they have been heavily edited down, but this means archaic language has been updated to be more modern.

I had fun reading this book, and was impressed with how far I could take my Spanish knowledge.

--Joe

Manuscript Diversity, Meaning, and Variance in Juan Manuel's El Conde Lucanor

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Manuscript Diversity, Meaning, and Variance in Juan Manuel's El Conde Lucanor
Laurence de Looze
Manufacturer: University of Toronto Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

Medieval | Classics | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

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ASIN: 0802090575

Juan Manuel's El Conde Lucanor was arguably one of the great masterworks of early modern Spain. Although the work appears in five very different manuscript versions from the fourteenth to the sixteenth centuries, most modern editions of El Conde Lucanor have neglected to account for the fact that it was part of a manuscript tradition, and that its meaning is substantially affected when its original forms are not taken in to account.

With Manuscript Diversity, Meaning, and Variance in Juan Manuel's El Conde Lucanor, Laurence de Looze demonstrates how the meaning of Juan Manuel's work changes depending on how the work is `performed' in particular manuscripts. This study proceeds from the assumption that, in a pre-printing press world, each new copy or `performance' of a work creates new meaning. By adopting this approach and by focusing on Parts II-V of the texts, de Looze argues that El Conde Lucanor raises questions about the interretation, intelligibility, and the production of knowledge. De Looze's complex and nuanced reading sheds new light on an important work and makes a significant contribution to medieval studies, Spanish studies, and the history of the book.