Amazon Expeditions: My Quest for the Ice-Age Equator

Colinvaux, an ecologist at the forefront of pollen research for the past 40 years, has turned his path breaking career into a scientific detective story, from his days as a graduate student drilling glaciers in the Alaskan tundra, to his explorations of lake beds in the steamy Amazon forest. The narrative follows his efforts to untangle ""one of the knottiest problems of ecological theory,"" why the Amazon is the most biodiverse region in the world, with a unique population of birds and 80,000 plant species. Could this be explained by catastrophic changes in the climate during the ice age? Colinvaux's research takes him across South America, and his conclusions turn on its head the hypothesis endorsed by most of the scientific community, that the equatorial temperature was constant but arid, so that life could only exist in enclaves (his findings indicates a moist climate and a temperature drop of four degrees). An exciting account of field work under challenging and sometimes dangerous circumstances, this is a rewarding read for anyone with an interest in environmental and biological history.