Books by Paul S. Martin

 

Twilight of the Mammoths : Ice Age Extinctions and the Rewilding of America
by Paul S. Martin, 2005, Univ. California Press.

"Paleontologist Martin delivers an energetic and highly entertaining look at one of the most controversial issues in his field of geoscience: overkill, the argument that "virtually all extinctions of wild animals in the last 50,000 years are anthropogenic, that is, caused by humans" and not by climate change. As one of the leading advocates of this theory, Martin uses his own extensive researchÑas well as amusing insights from his personal life and careerÑto make his case. He draws on studies from Costa Rica and Madagascar to California and the Grand Canyon, and brings alive on the page such extinct creatures as mammoths, mastodons and the "gentle giant" ground sloths, which he shows were present in North America before the arrival of prehistoric people. He is quite fair in presenting opposing arguments and displays his ability to explain complex concepts in understandable ways. But while Martin is convincing in his reasoning and his suggestions for developing new ecological parks to increase our appreciation of the lost beasts, what is most memorable is his ability to show that "we are half blind if we behold the Grand Canyon without visions" of its extinct species. 17 b&w photos, 12 line drawings."
Publisher's Weekly

 

Gentry's Rio Mayo Plants (Southwest Center Series)
by Howard Scott Gentry, Paul S. Martin, David Yetman, Mark Fishbein, Phil Jenkins, Thomas R. Van Devender, Rebecca K. Wilson (Editors), 1998, Univ. Arizona Press.

"I was given the opportunity to catalog Dr. Gentry's herbarium collection at the Desert Botanical Garden in 1987-88. I haven't seen the new edition mentioned here, but read the original work at the time I was cataloging his herbarium specimens. Through it, I was able to share his experience as an explorer in the spirit of John Wesley Powell, someone who knew that the American southwest is best delineated by watersheds, not along false lat/long lines. I met Dr. Gentry a couple of times, and remember the occasions well. Last time I saw him, when I was cataloging his collection, I overheard a conversation between him and a consultant for the Fort McDowell Indian Community. The consultant was asking about desert-adapted crop plants. Dr. Gentry went into great detail describing many desert plants suited to agriculture - tepary beans, jojoba, Lippia (Mexican oregano), agave, chiltepines, gum arabic, etc. I learned a lot just by eavesdropping. The consultant listened, but did not hear the words. He recommended that the Fort McDowell people plant cotton. Not because it was best suited to desert agriculture - far from that. They planted cotton because it needs vast quantities of water. They did not want the best desert-adapted crops. What they wanted, instead, was the best crop for wasting water, so that they could establish valid rights to the water. Worse, I watched them clear off vast acreages of mesquite forests to make room for the water-wasting cotton crop. The Hopi call this koyaanisqatsi. This book should help folks in southwestern north America realize that we have a bounteous resource, if we can only learn to use it."
S. Jones

 

Packrat Middens: The Last 40,000 Years of Biotic Change
by Julio L. Betancourt, Thomas R. Van Devender, Paul S. Martin (Editors), 1990, Univ. Arizona Press.

 

Quaternary Extinctions: A Prehistoric Revolution
by Paul S. Martin, Richard G. Klein (Editors), 1989, Univ. Arizona Press.

"This book is not for the novice. However, it is an excellently organized and drafted presentation of 40 papers on the variously submitted causes for the extinction of many dominant and marvelous animals, from the end of the Ice Age to our own time. Since no formal records were kept on this decline, even though many vanishings occurred during the time of record-keeping people, the scientist is left to investigate and to hypothesize on the cause or causes of the extinctions. Recorded here are many of those investigations and their results. The diversity of opinion is an exciting testament, not only to the ingenuity of the investigators, but to the processes of science itself."
Jerald R Lovell

 

The last 10,000 years;: A fossil pollen record of the American Southwest
by Paul S Martin, 1970, Univ. Arizona Press.

 

A bestiary for Pleistocene biologists
by Paul S Martin

 

Indians before Columbus: Twenty thousand years of North American history revealed by archeology
by Paul S Martin, 1967, Univ. Chicago Press.

 

Digging into history: A brief account of fifteen years of archaeological work in New Mexico
by Paul S Martin, 1959, Chicago Natural History Museum.

 

A biogeography of reptiles and amphibians in the Goímez Fariías region, Tamaulipas, Mexico
by Paul S Martin, 1958, Museum of Zoology, University of Michigan.