Diatoms to Dinosaurs: The Size and Scale of Living Things [Hardcover]

Chris McGowan (Author), Julian Mulock (Illustrator)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 1559633042 | ISBN-13: 978-1559633048 | Publication Date: August 1, 1994 | Edition: 1

In "Diatoms to Dinosaurs," Chris McGowan takes the reader on a fascinating journey through the natural world, and examines life in all its various forms. He imparts the excitement of discovery and the joy of understanding as he demonstrates the central importance of size and scale to the survival of living organisms.McGowan investigates a wide range of size-related phenomena, from the gliding mechanism of diatoms to blood pressure problems of dinosaurs. Questions asked -- and answered -- include: Will we ever see giant insects the size of pterodactyls? Why are ants so much stronger relative to body size than elephants? What do a clam, a condor, a tortoise, and a sturgeon have in common? How did the skeleton of a 28-ton Apatosaurus support its weight? How can blood get from the heart to the head of a giraffe without rupturing blood vessels? The author explicates the scientific concepts -- both physical and biological -- needed to inform the relevant phenomena: area/volume relations, metabolism and other basic physiology, kinetic energy, inertial forces, the biology of senescence, boundary layers, and Reynolds numbers. Numerous illustrations scattered throughout the text make the biophysical principles easily comprehensible to readers, regardless of their scientific sophistication.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

With a background in paleobiology, Christopher McGowan is adept at asking deceptively simple but actually very awkward questions of the "Well, we've dug up this fossil skeleton, now how on God's earth did it ever fly?" variety. McGowan looks at the way the scale and shape of animals relate to their behavior, diet, and life span. Why, in other words, tortoises live far longer than guinea pigs, but aren't nearly as much fun.

This line of argument leads to some seriously counterintuitive physics as McGowan explains how animals of different scales handle and exploit the physical constants by which they are bound. Discussions of drag, inertia, and viscosity are particularly well handled.

Especially refreshing and entertaining is McGowan's happy willingness to admit that millions of years of evolution are smarter than he is. Sometimes animals just make no sense at all. Consider Quetzalcoatlus, a pterosaur with a 40-foot wingspan and a long, serpentine neck. How did it get off the ground? Its neck suggests it may have been a carrion feeder. Did it climb laboriously to the peak of some vast saurian carcass and hitch a passing thermal? "This entire scenario," McGowan admits, with delicious understatement, "strikes me as fanciful."

While Diatoms to Dinosaurs is marketed very much at adults, there is an infectious enthusiasm about McGowan's writing that suggests a gifted teacher sharing sophisticated just-so stories with a spellbound class. --Simon Ings, Amazon.co.uk

From Library Journal

We humans, in our medium-sized world, seldom think about how the forces that affect us act on organisms either much smaller or much larger than ourselves. This new book looks at the sometimes surprising ways these forces work on different scales. McGowan examines the effects of scale on life span, metabolism, structural support, and brain size. Five of the 11 chapters deal with movement through fluids-flying and swimming. Most of the examples in the books are drawn from animals, primarily vertebrates, with a few examples of protists on the lower end of the spectrum. The subject is inherently mathematical, but McGowan makes the math reasonably approachable. Recommended for general and undergraduate science collections.
Bruce Neville, Univ. of Texas at El Paso Lib.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 288 pages
• Publisher: Island Press / Shearwater Books; 1 edition (August 1, 1994)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1559633042
• ISBN-13: 978-1559633048
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 7.1 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,650,145 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

19 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Physics of biology: limits of animal size and speed., August 19, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: Diatoms to Dinosaurs: The Size and Scale of Living Things (Hardcover)

McGowan has put together a nice book about basic limitations that physics sets on animal size, e.g. how insect respiratory system limits insect size, or how big a bird can fly, or how body shape, swimming speed and Reynolds numbers compare with plankton and whales. Even though the subtitle claims that the book is about "living things", there is nothing about plants, which is a pity because e.g. trees are extreme in size. McGowan's writing is lucid and the level is good for reading: there are a couple of equations and about hundred simple charts and figures (B&W, nothing fancy) which give good extra information to the text. You might also want to check Knut Schmidt-Nielsen's book "Scaling: Why Is Anaimal Size So Important".

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Interesting Subject; Dull Book, April 15, 2000

By 

S. Robertson (Tucson, Arizona USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Diatoms to Dinosaurs: The Size and Scale of Living Things (Hardcover)

This book almost repays the drudgery of reading it. It should be a case-study in poor editing. Apparently, no one ever quite decided who the audience was, and so it falls between any: though aimed at the general reader it is in essence a summary of technical literature - complete with maths, graphs, equations (more than a couple), and citations of authority in quasi-academic style. The text is at least one or two drafts from being finished; there are inadvertent repetitions, important points blurred or glossed over, paragraphs broken badly, and several discussions (including an entire chapter) that are off-topic and mostly pointless. McGowan's personal stories and asides are not well-integrated, as if an afterthought tacked on simply to soften his rather dry style. The illustrations are small, the photographs few and not directly relevant to the text.

McGowan seems to know what he is writing about; he needs an editor firmer and more adept and a publisher willing to put more money into the production.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Unlimited wonders of Life, March 15, 2001

By 

Pacelli Torres (Sapporo, Japan) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Diatoms to Dinosaurs: The Size and Scale of Living Things (Hardcover)

An excellent exploration of the mysteries of living things.

We are surrounded by wonders. From the tiny phytoplankton with 7.5 micrometers in size, to the giant brachiosaurus weighing 78 tons, life manages to find its way, showing us facts that are just almost impossible to believe.

This is one of those books you can trust because is written for somebody who knows what he is writing about. Explores quite interesting subjects ranging from the movement of the wings doves and bats, to the heart rate of mice, and the naps of elephants. There are also very good illustrations in it.

Definitely, a very nice and productive reading for everybody, especially for those Lovers of Nature.

We need a wide mind to understand the wide wonders of Life.