City at the Water's Edge: A Natural History of New York

Notes

N o t e s Introduction: Coming Home 1. Kirkpatrick Sale, Dwellers in the Land: The Bioregional Vision (1985; Santa Cruz, Calif.: New Society Publishers, 1991). 2. Peter Berg, “A Metamorphosis for Cities: From Gray to Green,” City Lights Review 4 (n.d.). Reprint courtesy of Planet Drum, San Francisco. 1. Bedrock New York 1. Charles Merguerian and John Sanders, Geology of Manhattan and the Bronx (New York: New York Academy of Sciences, Section of Geological Sciences, Field Trips 1990– 1991). Unless otherwise noted, my primary source for the reconstruction of New York City’s geological history prior to the ice age is the series of field-trip notes by Merguerian and Sanders of Hofstra University published under the auspices of the New York Academy of Sciences. Additional sources are Les Sirkin, Western Long Island Geology (Watch Hill, R.I.: Book and Tackle Shop, 1996); Bradford B. Van Diver, Roadside Geology of New York (Missoula , Mont.: Mountain Press, 1985); and David C. Roberts, Geology of Eastern North America (Boston: Peterson Field Guides, Houghton Mifflin, 1996). Although predating plate tectonic theory, John Kieran’s Natural History of New York City (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1959) also provides a good description of New York City’s bedrock geology. 2. Charles Merguerian and Mickey Merguerian, “Geology of Central Park—From Rocks to Ice,” www.dukelabs.com/Abstracts%20and%20Papers/CMMM2004.htm. 3. Charles Merguerian and John E. Sanders, Staten Island and Vicinity (New York: New York Academy of Sciences, Section of Geological Sciences: September 29, 1991, Field Trip), 25–28. 4. Merguerian and Sanders, Geology of Manhattan and the Bronx, 27–28. 5. Charles Merguerian, “Tunnel Vision: Subterranean Paradise or Name That Quake,” Hofstra University Distinguished Faculty Lecture Series, September 27, 2000. www.dukelabs .com/Abstracts%20and%Papers/CM2000b.htm. 2. The Teeming Shore 1. Much of the description of life on the shores of New York City is based on information from William H. Amos and Stephen H. Amos, Audubon Society Nature Guides: Atlantic and Gulf Coasts, Chanticleer Press Edition (New York: Alfred A. Knopf/Borzoi Book, 1988), and Rachel Carson, The Edge of the Sea (1955; Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1983). 2. Lynn Margulis et al., eds., Handbook of Protoctista (Boston: Jones and Bartlett, 1990). 3. Carson, The Edge of the Sea, 169–173. 4. Ibid., 53. 5. Lynn Margulis and Dorion Sagan, Microcosmos: Four Billion Years of Microbial Evolution (New York: Summit Books, 1986), 60–64. 6. Charles Merguerian and Charles E. Sanders, The Geology of Manhattan and the Bronx (New York: New York Academy of Sciences, Section of Geological Sciences, Field Trip 1990–1991: April 21, 1991), 14. 7. Stephen Jay Gould, Wonderful Life: The Burgess Shale and the Nature of History (New York and London: Norton, 1989), 47. 8. Ibid., 99. 9. Ibid., 145–151. Gould’s italics. 10. Ibid., 30–31. 11. Russell D. White, The Legacy of Invertebrate Paleontology at Yale University (New Haven: Peabody Museum of Natural History/Yale University, 1999), reprint accessed at www.peabody.yale.edu. 12. Derek E. G. Briggs and Gregory D. Edgecombe, “The Gold Bugs,” Natural History, November 1992, 37–42. Briggs is the current Curator of Invertebrate Paleontology at the Peabody Museum; investigation of the Beecher Trilobite Bed is ongoing. 13. William A. Shear, “One Small Step for an Arthropod,” Natural History, March 1993, 47–51; Linda VanAllen Hernick, The Gilboa Fossils, New York State Museum, Circular No. 65, 2003. My reconstruction of fossil discoveries at Gilboa are based on both the Shear article and Hernick book. 14. Hernick, Gilboa Fossils, 62–77. 15. Harlan P. Banks and J. D. Grierson, Lycopods of the Devonian of New York State, Paleontographica Americana 4, no. 31 (1963), cited in ibid. 16. Shear, “One Small Step for an Arthropod,” and Hernick, Gilboa Fossils, 77–85. 17. My reconstruction of vertebrate evolution is based on information provided at the American Museum of Natural History, Hall of Vertebrates. On “living fossils,” see Niles Eldridge , Fossils: The Evolution and Extinction of Species (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991), 92–94. See also Richard Fortey, Life: A Natural History of the First Four Billion Years of Life on Earth (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1997), 160. 18. Philip Whitfield, From So Simple a Beginning: An Illustrated Exploration of the 4Billion -Year Development of Life on Earth, Foreword by Roger Lewin (New York: Macmillan , 1993), 38; and Fortey, Life, 166–185. 19. Fortey, Life, 149. 20. Ibid., 202–209. 21. William B. Gallagher, When Dinosaurs Roamed New Jersey (New Brunswick...