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Rhinoceros Giants: The Paleobiology of the Indricotheres
By Carl Buell, Donald R. Prothero. 2013
Written for everyone fascinated by the huge beasts that once roamed the earth, this book introduces the giant hornless rhinoceros,…
Indricotherium. These massive animals inhabited Asia and Eurasia for more than 14 million years, about 37 to 23 million years ago. They had skulls 6 feet long, stood 22 feet high at the shoulder, and were twice as heavy as the largest elephant ever recorded, tipping the scales at 44,100 pounds. Fortunately, the big brutes were vegetarians. Donald R. Prothero tells their story, from their discovery just a century ago to the latest research on how they lived and died.New Perspectives on Horned Dinosaurs
By Philip J. Currie, David A. Eberth, Michael J. Ryan, Patricia E. Ralrick, Brenda J. Chinnery-Allgeier. 2010
Easily distinguished by the horns and frills on their skulls, ceratopsians were one of the most successful of all dinosaurs.…
This volume presents a broad range of cutting-edge research on the functional biology, behavior, systematics, paleoecology, and paleogeography of the horned dinosaurs, and includes descriptions of newly identified species.Bone Histology of Fossil Tetrapods
By Kevin Padian, Ellen-Thérèse Lamm. 2013
The microscopic examination of fossilized bone tissue is a sophisticated and increasingly important analytical tool for understanding the life history…
of ancient organisms. This book provides an essential primer and manual for using fossil bone histology to investigate the biology of extinct tetrapods. Twelve experts summarize advances in the field over the past three decades, reviewing fundamental basics of bone microanatomy and physiology. Research specimen selection, thin-section preparation, and data analysis are addressed in detail. The authors also outline methods and issues in bone growth rate calculation and chronological age determination, as well as how to examine broader questions of behavior, ecology, and evolution by studying the microstructure of bone.Embryos in Deep Time
By Marcelo R. Sánchez. 2012
How can we bring together the study of genes, embryos and fossils? Embryos in Deep Time is a critical synthesis…
of the study of individual development in fossils. It brings together an up-to-date review of concepts from comparative anatomy, ecology and developmental genetics, and examples of different kinds of animals from diverse geological epochs and geographic areas. Can fossil embryos demonstrate evolutionary changes in reproductive modes? How have changes in ocean chemistry in the past affected the development of marine organisms? What can the microstructure of fossil bone and teeth reveal about maturation time, longevity and changes in growth phases? This book addresses these and other issues and documents with numerous examples and illustrations how fossils provide evidence not only of adult anatomy but also of the life history of individuals at different growth stages. The central topic of Biology today--the transformations occurring during the life of an organism and the mechanisms behind them--is addressed in an integrative manner for extinct animals.A Place in the Sun
By Sean Mills. 2016
What is the relationship between migration and politics in Quebec? How did French Canadians' activities in the global south influence…
future debates about migration and Quebec society? How did migrants, in turn, shape debates about language, class, nationalism and sexuality? A Place in the Sun explores these questions through overlapping histories of Quebec and Haiti. From the 1930s to the 1950s, French-Canadian and Haitian cultural and political elites developed close intellectual bonds and large numbers of French-Canadian missionaries began working in the country. Through these encounters, French-Canadian intellectual and religious figures developed an image of Haiti that would circulate widely throughout Quebec and have ongoing cultural ramifications. After first exploring French-Canadian views of Haiti, Sean Mills reverses the perspective by looking at the many ways that Haitian migrants intervened in and shaped Quebec society. As the most significant group seen to integrate into francophone Quebec, Haitian migrants introduced new perspectives into a changing public sphere during decades of political turbulence. By turning his attention to the ideas and activities of Haitian taxi drivers, exiled priests, aspiring authors, dissident intellectuals, and feminist activists, Mills reconsiders the historical actors of Quebec intellectual and political life, and challenges the traditional tendency to view migrants as peripheral to Quebec history. Ranging from political economy to discussions about sexuality, A Place in the Sun demonstrates the ways in which Haitian migrants opened new debates, exposed new tensions, and forever altered Quebec society.There are many analyses of Tractarianism – a nineteenth-century form of Anglicanism that emphasized its Catholic origins – but how…
did people in the colonies react to the High Church movement? Beating against the Wind, a study in nineteenth-century vernacular spirituality, emphasizes the power of faith on a shifting frontier in a transatlantic world. Focusing on people living along the Newfoundland and Labrador coast, Calvin Hollett presents a nuanced perspective on popular resistance to the colonial emissary Bishop Edward Feild and his spiritual regimen of order, silence, and solemnity. Whether by outright opposing Bishop Feild, or by simply ignoring his wishes and views, or by brokering a hybrid style of Gothic architecture, the people of Newfoundland and Labrador demonstrated their independence in the face of an attempt at hierarchical ascendency upon the arrival of Tractarianism in British North America. Instead, they continued to practise evangelical Anglicanism and participate in Methodist revivals, and thereby negotiated a popular Protestantism, one often infused with the spirituality of other seafarers from Nova Scotia and New England. Exploring the interaction between popular spirituality and religious authority, Beating against the Wind challenges the traditional claim of Feild’s success in bringing Tractarianism to the colony while exploring the resistance to Feild’s initiatives and the reasons for his disappointments.Riel's Defence
By Hans V. Hansen. 2014
In 1885, Louis Riel was charged with high treason, found guilty, and consequently executed for his role in Saskatchewan's North-West…
Rebellion. During his trial, the Métis leader gave two speeches, passionately defending the interests of the Métis in western Canada as well as his own life. Riel's Defence studies these speeches, demonstrating the range of Riel's political and personal concerns. The first and better known of the two speeches addresses the jury, while Riel's second speech - rarely reprinted - addresses the court following his guilty verdict. Both orations have been edited, annotated, and reprinted, and are followed by essays from diverse perspectives including philosophy, law, history, political science, religion, and communication studies. Through the course of their inquiry, contributors come to understand more about Riel's personal character and political thought, as well as his arguments supporting Métis land claims, grievances against the federal government, and his immigration plan for the North-West. Evaluating the rhetorical quality, legal merit, and cultural stakes of his speeches, Riel's Defence reveals the significance of the last public statements made by a man who indelibly shaped Canada's history by combining his personal vision with a national vision.How Vertebrates Left the Water
By Michel Laurin. 2010
More than three hundred million years ago--a relatively recent date in the two billion years since life first appeared--vertebrate animals…
first ventured onto land. This usefully illustrated book describes how some finned vertebrates acquired limbs, giving rise to more than 25,000 extant tetrapod species. Michel Laurin uses paleontological, geological, physiological, and comparative anatomical data to describe this monumental event. He summarizes key concepts of modern paleontological research, including biological nomenclature, paleontological and molecular dating, and the methods used to infer phylogeny and character evolution. Along with a discussion of the evolutionary pressures that may have led vertebrates onto dry land, the book also shows how extant vertebrates yield clues about the conquest of land and how scientists uncover evolutionary history.From Treaties to Reserves
By D. J. Hall. 2015
Though some believe that the Indian treaties of the 1870s achieved a unity of purpose between the Canadian government and…
First Nations, in From Treaties to Reserves D.J. Hall asserts that - as a result of profound cultural differences - each side interpreted the negotiations differently, leading to conflict and an acute sense of betrayal when neither group accomplished what the other had asked. Hall explores the original intentions behind the government's policies, illustrates their attempts at cooperation, and clarifies their actions. While the government believed that the Aboriginal peoples of what is now southern and central Alberta desired rapid change, the First Nations, in contrast, believed that the government was committed to supporting the preservation of their culture while they adapted to change. Government policies intended to motivate backfired, leading instead to poverty, starvation, and cultural restriction. Many policies were also culturally insensitive, revealing misconceptions of Aboriginal people as lazy and over-dependent on government rations. Yet the first two decades of reserve life still witnessed most First Nations people participating in reserve economies, many of the first generation of reserve-born children graduated from schools with some improved ability to cope with reserve life, and there was also more positive cooperation between government and First Nations people than is commonly acknowledged. The Indian treaties of the 1870s meant very different things to government officials and First Nations. Rethinking the interaction between the two groups, From Treaties to Reserves elucidates the complexities of this relationship.Something of a Peasant Paradise?
By Gregory M.W. Kennedy. 2014
Were Acadians better off than their rural counterparts in old regime France? Did they enjoy a Golden Age? To what…
degree did a distinct Acadian identity emerge before the wars and deportations of the mid-eighteenth century? In Something of a Peasant Paradise?, Gregory Kennedy compares Acadie in North America with a region of western France, the Loudunais, from which a number of the colonists originated. Kennedy considers the natural environment, the role of the state, the economy, the seigneury, and local governance in each place to show that similarities between the two societies have been greatly underestimated or ignored. The Acadian colonists and the people of the Loudunais were frontier peoples, with dispersed settlement patterns based on kin groups, who sought to make the best use of the land and to profit from trade opportunities. Both societies were hierarchical, demonstrated a high degree of political agency, and employed the same institutions of local governance to organize their affairs and negotiate state demands. Neither group was inherently more prosperous, egalitarian, or independent-minded than the other. Rather, the emergence of a distinct Acadian identity can be traced to the gradual adaptation of traditional methods, institutions, and ideas to their new environmental and political situations. A compelling comparative analysis based on archival evidence on both sides of the Atlantic, Something of a Peasant Paradise? Challenges the traditional historiography and demonstrates that Acadian society shared many of its characteristics with other French rural societies of the period.On to Civvy Street
By Peter Neary. 2011
Detailing the ways in which the Canadian government built on existing programs for veterans, Peter Neary identifies the key figures…
and events responsible for developing the orders and statutes that came to be known as the Veterans Charter, creating the Department of Veterans Affairs, and establishing sweeping new benefits for servicemen and women. Comparing rehabilitation programs after the Second World War with those after the First World War, Neary reveals the lasting importance of the country's new way of expressing its obligations to veterans. He shows that the measures developed to reintegrate them into civilian society became essential building blocks for the Canadian welfare state and helped pave the way for the unprecedented prosperity of the 1950s. A comprehensive study of a fundamental change in the relationship between government and citizens, On to Civvy Street is also a timely reminder of the debt the country owes its veterans.Kingdom of the Mind
By Peter E. Rider, Heather Mcnabb. 2006
In A Kingdom of the Mind ethnographers, material culture specialists, and contributors from a wide variety of disciplines explore the…
impact of the Scots on Canadian life, showing how the Scots' image of their homeland and themselves played an important role in the emerging definition of what it meant to be Canadian.Why Did We Choose to Industrialize?
By Robert C.H. Sweeny. 2015
The choice to industrialize has changed the world more than any other decision in human history. And yet the three…
prevailing explanations - the technical (new energy sources), the Marxist (new social relations), and the neo-liberal (people became more industrious) - are inadequate in making sense of this fundamental change. In mid-nineteenth-century Montreal, as in other early industrializing societies, change occurred as a result of the choices people made when faced with unprecedented opportunities and constraints. Montreal was the first colonial city to industrialize. Its overlapping French and English legal traditions mean that people's actions were exceptionally well documented for a North American city. Robert Sweeny's novel reading of sources like city directories, ordinance surveys, monetary protests, and apprenticeship contracts leads him to develop important critiques of both mainstream and progressive historiography. He shows how the choice to industrialize was tied to the development of completely new ways of thinking about the world on three inter-related levels: how should we relate to each other, to property, and to nature? In Montreal, as in all the other early industrializing societies, thought preceded action. Sweeny illuminates the personal and familial decisions that tens of thousands of people made by the mid-nineteenth century which already prefigured much of what industrialized Montreal would look like in 1880. At a moment when global conflict is tied to resources and climate change, Sweeny shows how fundamental decision making can determine widespread social change. Informed by four decades of scholarship, Why Did We Choose to Industrialize? Is a politically engaged argument about history, a sustained reflection on sources and method in historical practice, and a singular vantage point on the ideas that have shaped historical understandings of industrialization.The Writings of David Thompson, Volume 2
By William E. Moreau. 1784
David Thompson's Travels is one of the finest early expressions of the Canadian experience. The work is not only the…
account of a remarkable life in the fur trade but an extended meditation on the land and Native peoples of western North America. The second in a planned three volumes of Thompson's writings, this edition completes the great surveyor and fur trader's spirited autobiographical narrative. In the 1848 Travels, Thompson describes his most enduring historical legacy - the extension of the fur trade across the Continental Divide between 1807 and 1812. During these years he established several Nor'wester trading posts, made contact with the tribal peoples of the Columbia Plateau, and tirelessly mapped the lands he traversed, all the time striving westward toward the Pacific. The tale culminates with Thompson's historic arrival at the mouth of the Columbia in July 1811. Like its companion Volume 1, this work presents an entirely new transcription by William Moreau of Thompson's manuscript, and is accompanied by an introductory essay placing the author in his historical and intellectual context. Extensive critical annotations, a biographical appendix, and historical and modern maps, make this the definitive collection of Thompson's works, and bring one of North America's most important travelers and surveyors to a new generation of readers.Beyond Brutal Passions
By Mary Anne Poutanen. 2015
During a time of significant demographic, geographic, and social transition, many women in early nineteenth-century Montreal turned to prostitution and…
brothel-keeping to feed, clothe, protect, and house themselves and their families. Beyond Brutal Passions is a close study of the women who were accused of marketing sex, their economic and social susceptibilities, and the strategies they employed to resist authority and assert their own agency. Referencing newspapers, parish registers, census returns, coroners' reports, city directories, documents of Catholic and Protestant institutions, police books, and court records, Mary Anne Poutanen reveals how these women confronted limited alternatives and how they fought against established authority in the pursuit of their livelihoods. She details these women's lives not only as prostitutes but also as wives, mothers, sisters, and daughters who reconstructed the bonds of kinship and solidarity. An insightful history of prostitution, Beyond Brutal Passions explores the complicated relationships between women accused of prostitution and the society in which they lived and worked.Canada's Victorian Oil Town
By Christina Burr. 2006
Departing from traditional historiography focused on the economic role of resource development, Canada's Victorian Oil Town incorporates an understanding of…
the connections between science and technology, nation and imperialism, and cultural nuances of community-building. Burr looks at the cultural importance of place and how collective identity was nurtured in the community. She also illustrates how the image of Petrolia as Canada's Victorian Oil Town has been used since the 1970s to develop a thriving tourist industry in the region. Interdisciplinary in scope, Canada's Victorian Oil Town draws from the history of imperialism, science, resource development, local history, gender studies, and cultural geography.Highway of the Atom
By Peter Van Wyck. 2010
A subarctic mine on the far eastern shores of Great Bear Lake provided Canadian uranium for the bombs detonated over…
Japan in August 1945. However, a complete history of Canada's involvement in the Manhattan Project and the development of the atomic bomb has been thwarted by restrictions on classified documents.The River Returns
By Matthew Evenden, H. V. Nelles, Christopher Armstrong. 2009
Alberta's iconic river has been dammed and plumbed, made to spin hydro-electric turbines, and used to cleanse Calgary. Artificial lakes…
in the mountains rearrange its flow; downstream weirs and ditches divert it to irrigate the parched prairie. Far from being wild, the Bow is now very much a human product: its fish are as manufactured as its altered flow, changed water quality, and newly stabilized and forested banks. The River Returns brings the story of the Bow River's transformation full circle through an exploration of the recent revolution in environmental thinking and regulation that has led to new limits on what might be done with and to the river.Partita for Glenn Gould
By Georges Leroux. 2010
Glenn Gould (1932-1982) was a giant of twentieth-century classical music, but one whose eccentricities have sometimes obscured the moral seriousness…
of his approach to art. Countering this common misperception, Partita for Glenn Gould is an eloquent tribute to the artist that illuminates his versatile genius, his thinking, and our reasons for loving his art.Forgotten Labrador
By Cleophas Belvin. 2006
Cleophas Belvin describes the arrival of the Aboriginals and the activities of the Breton and Basque fishermen and French-and English-speaking…
merchants from Quebec City who controlled the region for more than one hundred and fifty years. He paints a vivid picture of the lifestyle and living conditions of the early French- and English-speaking pioneers and their descendants, offering an analysis of why they settled in the region and how they dealt with the precariousness of the seal, salmon, and cod fisheries. The Forgotten Labrador also explores the role of the Anglican and Catholic missionaries, the establishment of educational, medical, transportation, and communication services and the various government and local initiatives that were undertaken to provide the people with some form of economic prosperity.