Peter D. Ward is a paleontologist and professor of Biology and of Earth and Space Sciences at the University of Washington. Ward is co-author, along with Donald Brownlee, of the best-selling Rare Earth: Why Complex Life Is Uncommon in the Universe, published in 2000. In the work the authors suggest that the universe is fundamentally hostile to advanced life, and that while simple life might be abundant the likelihood of widespread lifeforms as advanced as those on Earth is marginal. A paleontologist carefully chips rock from a column of dinosaur vertebrae. ... The University of Washington, founded in 1861, is a public research university in Seattle, Washington. ... The Rare Earth hypothesis is a hypothesis in planetary astronomy and astrobiology which argues that the emergence of complex multicellular life (metazoa) on Earth required an extremely unlikely combination of astrophysical and geological events and circumstances. ...

Ward also specializes in the Cretaceous-Tertiary extinction and mass extinctions generally. Along with Rare Earth, he has published eight books on biodiversity and the fossil record. Ward also serves as an adjunct professor of zoology and astronomy. The Cretaceous-Tertiary (K-T or KT) extinction event, also known as the KT boundary, was a period of massive extinction of species, about 65. ... An extinction event (also extinction-level event, ELE) is a period in time when a large number of species die out. ... Rainforests are among the most biodiverse ecosystems on earth Biodiversity is the variation of taxonomic life forms within a given ecosystem, biome or for the entire Earth. ... It has been suggested that this article or section be merged into Fossil. ... Zoology (rarely spelled zoölogy) is the biological discipline which involves the study of non-human animals. ... A giant Hubble mosaic of the Crab Nebula, a supernova remnant Astronomy (also frequently referred to as astrophysics) is the scientific study of celestial objects (such as stars, planets, comets, and galaxies) and phenomena that originate outside the Earths atmosphere (such as the cosmic background radiation). ...

Appearances

Peter Ward was featured in the PBS Evolution Series [1] to discuss the evidence for evolution in the geologic record and has appeared on NOVA Science Now.

See Also

Gorgonopsia Gorgonopsids as seen in Walking with Monsters Gorgonopsia (Gorgon face) is a suborder of synapsids. ...

Selected works

• Rivers in Time (2000)
• Rare Earth: Why Complex Life Is Uncommon in the Universe with Donald Brownlee (2000)
• Future Evolution (2001) ISBN 0-7167-3496-6
• The Life and Death of Planet Earth: How the New Science of Astrobiology Charts the Ultimate Fate of Our World with Donald Brownlee (2003) ISBN 0-8050-6781-7
• Gorgon: Obsession, Paleontology, and the Greatest Mass Extinction (2004)
• Life as We Do Not Know It (2005) ISBN 0-670-03458-4
• Out of Thin Air: Dinosaurs, Birds, and Earth's Ancient Atmosphere (2006) ISBN 0-309-10061-5
• Under a Green Sky: Global Warming, the Mass Extinctions of the Past, and What They Can Tell Us About Our Future (2007) ISBN 978-0061137914

Life As We Do Not Know It is a non-fiction book by Peter Ward. ...

References

• The Science of Doom: Peter Ward takes on the great unknowns, Pacific Northwest magazine (Seattle Times), December 11, 2005, p. 12ff

External links

• http://www.pbs.org/kcet/shapeoflife/explorations/bio_ward.html

• http://www.ess.washington.edu/People/faculty_bio/ward-bio.html