Thomas, C. D.
Summary: It is accepted wisdom today that human beings have irrevocably damaged the natural world. Yet what if this narrative obscures a more hopeful truth? In "Inheritors of the Earth", renowned ecologist and environmentalist Chris D. Thomas overturns the accepted story, revealing how nature is fighting back. Many animals and plants actually benefit from our presence, raising biological diversity in...
Format: text
Publisher / Publication Date: Allen Lane, an imprint of Penguin Books 2017
Copies Available at Woodmere
1 available in Adult Non-fiction, Call number: 576 THOSummary: Is the key theory about how we evolved from apes based on mistaken evidence? Since 1974, the 3.2-million-year-old fossil dubbed "Lucy" has been considered humankind's prime ancestor. Now, a fossil recently unearthed in Kenya by distinguished paleontologist Dr. Meave Leakey is rewriting the theories. This program examines the implications of Flat-Faced Man, a bipedal hominid just as old as Lucy...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2005
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Summary: The modern consequences of an ancient human obsession, the fear of inheriting bad genes, are explored in this program. In Hiroshima, Steve Jones speaks with hibakusha-children of atom bomb survivors, shunned as dangerous mates-and assesses the genetic risk that their children will be mutants. The royal blood disease, hemophilia, is traced through the genes, but Jones scientifically disproves...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
View online at AVOD
Summary: This Science Screen Report explains how biologists help endangered species. It highlights captive breeding techniques that have strengthened populations of Malayan tapirs and southern white rhinos; it also examines the artificial insemination of giant pandas and the teaching of survival skills to orphaned orangutans. Emphasizing that humans can learn and benefit from these experiences-for...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
View online at AVOD
Summary: When On the Origin of Species appeared in 1859, it quickly took hold in the popular imagination-but it also glossed over significant and rather disturbing questions. This program explores Darwin's ideas on human evolution, which he developed and made public toward the end of his life. Science interpreter Jim Doherty reveals how Darwin searched for parallels between humans and animals through a...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2009
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Summary: This program provides arguments in favor of continental drift and the one-time existence of a supercontinent, shows how isolation can give rise to different species and how species develop in response to their environments, and explains clines and suggests the reason for their existence. After viewing the program, students should understand the significance of the continental drift theory, the...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2005
View online at AVOD
Summary: By turns charming, alarming, and poignant, this program questions the accuracy of the human evolution theory. Chimpanzees show signs of sophisticated language, advanced social behavior, and other traits thought reserved only for humans-even empathy. No one knows this better than the legendary Jane Goodall: her pride and joy, Frodo, grew up in front of film cameras in Gombe in Tanzania for over...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
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Summary: This program examines how genetic studies are being used divisively by blacks and whites to prove racial superiority. A sociologist uses poor black IQ test performances as a basis for recommending welfare cuts. Controversial New York University professor Leonard Jeffries discusses melanin, the pigment responsible for black skin, as stimulating intellectual and artistic abilities in blacks....
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
View online at AVOD
Summary: This program shows the structure and replicating processes of DNA and the effect of genetic mutation; demonstrates the Lederberg Experiment; and recapitulates the evidence provided by fossils and structural and biological homologies that the process of adaptation and the selection of adaptors rests on a wide range of genetic variability. After viewing the program, students should have a general...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2005
View online at AVOD
Summary: In this program, genetic teams in England and Finland study how defective genes can be altered to halt transmission of disease through the generations. In England, geneticist John Burn discovers a woman's lethal cancer gene, inherited from her father. She undergoes early treatment that saves her life. Thirty genetic diseases exist in Finland. Steve Jones traces a defective gene in one family,...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
View online at AVOD
Summary: This program seeks to understand how relationships between living things have promoted the diversity and splendor of life as it exists on Earth today. Predation, competition, and symbiosis are addressed through topics such as the anatomical arms race between predators and prey, the evolutionary benefits of sexual reproduction, and the impact of viruses on creatures ranging from rabbits to human...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
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Summary: This program analyzes how flight evolved not once but four times, in very different ways. Presenting a number of theories, the program examines how insects, pterosaurs, birds, and bats each took to the sky. Bug wings that may have evolved from larval gills into pond-crossing sails; flight feathers that could have begun as soft down on small dinosaurs; and bat wings that probably developed from...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
View online at AVOD
Summary: 160 million years ago, a massive lava flow in China's Junggar Basin resulted in an eerily preserved "community" akin to the ruins of Pompeii-in this case, not a scene of human domesticity but a spectacular dinosaur graveyard. This program explores the site and evokes one of the most exciting questions in paleontology: how and why did dinosaurs become gigantic? Viewers are shown specimens from...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2010
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Summary: How do humans influence changes in other species? Has Homo sapiens itself stopped evolving? This program explores natural selection as an ongoing phenomenon, showing how evolutionary processes continue to shape the future of all life on Earth. Exploring the competition for resources, territory, and mates that occurs in any ecosystem, the video illustrates how species differentiation takes...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2009
View online at AVOD
Summary: This program introduces the concepts of naturally occurring and artificially induced mutagens, demonstrates how X-radiation and chemical additives can produce genetic mutations, introduces Dr. Maclyn McCarty (one of three researchers who identified DNA as the substance that transformed one variety of Pneumococcus into another), and shows how DNA is extracted and precipitated. After viewing the...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2005
View online at AVOD
Summary: The oceans are life's laboratory, the global test tube where trial and error meet cause and effect. By focusing on pivotal animals-ammonites, flatworms, sea squirts, frog fish, and bottlenose dolphins, to name only five-and anatomical adaptations such as the eye, the brain, the backbone, and fins, this program illustrates how life populated the seas. Evidence of humankind's evolutionary past is...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
View online at AVOD
Summary: Did the ancestors of the human race go through a crucial semi-aquatic phase? This balanced program examines the latest evidence that water played a major role in human evolution and assesses how it stands up to the traditional Savanna Theory proposed by Darwin. Preeminent critics and adherents of the Aquatic Ape Theory discuss such key points as humans' unique diving reflex and voluntary breath...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
View online at AVOD
Summary: Steve Jones investigates what constitutes Native American blood, then follows three individuals as they use DNA matching of a female gene to attempt to confirm a genetic link between themselves and their Pequot ancestors. How Native Americans were disconnected from their heritage is examined by several tribal members, and the point is made that some want to establish their Indian bloodlines to...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
View online at AVOD
Summary: All other life forms except humans exist to propagate themselves and pass on their genes; humans alone work to other ends. In this lecture, Richard Dawkins distinguishes between the result of eons of natural selection which has resulted in, say, a bird's tail, whose purpose is to enable the bird to fly-purpose with a survival value-and deliberate design, like an airplane's tail. Dawkins shows...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2010
View online at AVOD
Summary: An extraterrestrial biologist would probably not hesitate to classify Homo sapiens as just another chimpanzee. After all, the two species share 98 percent of their DNA-and yet what a difference that two percent makes. This program investigates how such similar primates became so very dissimilar.and how humans, having reached the point where they are little hindered by natural selection, are...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
View online at AVOD
Summary: Steve Jones travels from Israel's Plains of Armageddon to Africa's Great Zimbabwe to solve the age-old riddle of what happened to the fabled lost tribes of Israel. Genealogists use DNA to trace the connection between a Samaritan tribe and non-indigenous Jewish groups, and to trace the ancestry of Mormons, who claim to be descended from a lost tribe. In Africa, a tribe shows anthropological...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
View online at AVOD
Summary: This collection of NewsHour segments examines developments in zoology and agriculture that are challenging scientists, business leaders, and government officials alike. With commentary from Lori Williams of the National Invasive Species Council, the program studies a disturbing increase in nonnative and often harmful insect populations on American soil. North Carolina's sprawling hog farms and...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2007
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Summary: When paleontologist Per Ahlberg discovered a strange fossil overlooked for decades at a museum in Latvia, he knew he was onto something. In this astounding program, Ahlberg and Jenny Clack, of the Cambridge University Museum of Zoology; Ted Daeschler, of the Philadelphia Academy of Natural Sciences; and Keith Thomson, of the Oxford University Museum, reexamine the evolution of the first...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2005
View online at AVOD
Summary: Marking the 150th anniversary of the publication of On the Origin of Species, this program shows how Charles Darwin developed his theory of evolution and explores its ramifications in today's scientific community. Renowned natural history interpreter David Attenborough travels the globe, examining fresh evidence for Darwinian thought and illustrating why it is more relevant than ever. Viewers...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2009