"the tooth of a giant"
This fairly accurate metaphor applies to the first mastodon fossil to be discovered and subjected to what passed for scientific study at the time. The fossil had been discovered in 1705 in the northern region of the colony of New York.
A Picture is Worth a Metaphor
Every once in a while a reader will come across a metaphorical description of a landmark that is accompanied by a photographic image. Sometimes that image will support the metaphor; others time it does not. When it comes to the picture of Funk Island included in the text, one can definitely see what the author was getting at:
"The island looked like an enormous column, like a giant pedestal waiting for an even more gigantic statue.”
Invasive Travel
Darwinian evolution are premised upon the concept that it is not that easy or efficient for species to travel large distances and so therefore the balance of evolution had a natural check upon the influence of invasive species. Global travel has changed all that when it comes to vegetation and the result has what the author terms a kind of reversal of evolutionary history in which this the ability to transport non-native species by accident or design around the planet in a matter of hours has become, metaphorically speaking:
“a souped-up version of plate tectonics, minus the plate.”
“man was a killer right from the start”
In a consideration of the extinction event of megafauna, the author considers whether the cause was non-human related natural climate change or whether it was the arrival of the humans. The available evidence seems to support the contention that it was humans and since the megafauna began going extinct right in the middle of the last Ice Age, it would mean that the metaphor quoted for this section actually has a certain level of literal truth to it.
Mass Extinction Denial
The first scientific paper to propose that the mass extinction of dinosaurs resulted from a catastrophic astronomical event—a theory widely accepted as possible if not definitive today—was met with almost universal rejection upon publication. A sampling of how most critics responded is give metaphorical form by an unidentified paleontologist quoted in the New York times:
“The apparent mass extinction is an artifact of statistics and poor understanding of taxonomy.”
