History Literature / Evolution

** Another 3a happens to the intelligent dinosaurs from "The Hunters of Pangaea". It may have been hastened by the decision of the protagonist to kill the matriarch of the diplodocus herd that they depend upon, but at that point she was aware that they were doomed.

* ADogNamedDog: Three of the first protagonists of the story are a ''Purgatorius'' named Purga, a ''Plesiadapis'' named Plesi and a ''Notharctus'' named Noth. Of course none of these characters actually call themselves by names; they are more like convenient labels used by the story to refer to them.

* TheFairFolk: The pithecines, who took to living as scavengers in the forest fringe and occasionally hunted humans, their savannah-dwelling cousins, are depicted as the basis of reality of these myths.

* RodentsOfUnusualSize: 30 millions after the end of civilisation, the rodent survivors of the crash have diversified into rat-cheetahs, rat-leopards and rat-raptors that hunt rabbit-gazelles and duck-billed goats.

* ArtisticLicenseAstronomy: While it's true the Sun gets more luminous with time and that increasing luminosity will mess so much with Earth's climate that will cause the eventual extinction of life and loss of oceans much before it goes into red-giant mode, the Sun that will shine 500 million years in the future, when the last chapter of the book takes place, will not be very different of the current one in size and luminosity and not the ferocious one Baxter describes, at least if stellar evolution models are right. See [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Solar_evolution_%28English%29.svg]]

* AnachronicOrder: The second chapter is set eighty million years earlier than the first and third ones, during the Jurassic.

* ADogNamedDog: Three of the first protagonists of the story are a ''Purgatorius'' named Purga, a ''Plesiadapis'' named Plesi and a ''Notharctus'' named Noth.

* AfterTheEnd: Due to the timescale of the books, many chapters could qualify, but the Descendants section is the most obvious from a human perspective.

** Another 3a happens to the intelligent dinosaurs from "The Hunters of Pangea". It may have been hastened by the decision of the protagonist to kill the matriarch of the diplodocus herd that they depend upon, but at that point she was aware that they were doomed.

* ArtisticLicensePaleontology:
** While most of the time Baxter gets the science right, and the speculative leaps he takes are somewhat within the bounds of plausibility, a few examples must be mentioned. First of all, in the story about the sapient ''Ornitholestes'', he mentions that the only evidence humans had of these species is the disappearance of sauropods in the Late Jurassic, since the sapient species' bones and technology are too fragile to preserve. Problem is, sauropods didn't go extinct in the Late Jurassic, not even in the Northern Hemisphere. There were as many sauropods infesting North America in the Early Cretaceous as there were in the Late Jurassic, including ''Astrodon'', ''Sauroposeidon'', and ''Sonorasaurus''. However, there ''was'' a mass extinction at the end of the Jurassic that claimed the dominant Jurassic sauropods, and the sauropods referred to in that story were all ''Diplodocus'', which did go extinct then. The phrase was 'the disappearance of ''the'' giant sauropods'. It could easily have meant just those specific species, not sauropods in general.
** The story about primates coming to North America has some anachronism and MisplacedWildlife in it too. Not only does it have indricotherid rhinos (native only to Asia), camels (who were only found in North America at this time), and such, it has gastornid birds inhabiting Oligocene-Miocene Africa...yes, even after these animals were supposed to have died out in the middle Eocene.

* CorruptChurch: Religion is depicted as the creation of a manipulative woman wielding her dead son's memory as a weapon in a bid to gain political power.
** On the other hand, religion is shown to have also a positive impact on the tribe since its teachings improve the quality of life of its members and bring unity to them.

* GiantFlyer: The air whale, a giant pterosaurs that lives in the stratosphere and leaves no fossil evidence behind.

* SceneryGorn: After many vivid descriptions of the world of the dinosaurs, both in the late Jurassic and the late Cretaceous, the destruction of that world is described just as vividly.

** While most of the time Baxter gets the science right, and the speculative leaps he takes are somewhat within the bounds of plausibility, a few examples must be mentioned. First of all, in the story about the sapient ''Ornitholestes'', he mentions that the only evidence humans had of these species is the disappearance of sauropods in the Late Jurassic, since the sapient species bones and technology are too fragile to preserve. Problem is, sauropods didn't go extinct in the Late Jurassic, not even in the Northern Hemisphere. There were as many sauropods infesting North America in the Early Cretaceous as there were in the Late Jurassic, including ''Astrodon'', ''Sauroposeidon'', and ''Sonorasaurus''.
** However there was a mass-extinction at the end of the Jurassic that claimed the dominant Jurassic sauropods, and the sauropods referred to in that story were all ''Diplodocus'', which did go extinct then. The phrase was 'the disappearance of ''the'' giant sauropods'. This could easily have meant just those specific species, not sauropods in general.

''Evolution'' is a novel by Creator/StephenBaxter spanning 645 million years of Earth's history, with most chapters focusing on 65 million years ago to 30 million years in the future. The book is split into three parts: Ancestors, which focuses on various director ancestors to humans, starting with a ratlike animal that coexisted with the dinosaurs, Humans, which depicts various turning in human development, and Descendants, which is set AfterTheEnd.

* ArtisticLicenseAstronomy: While it's true the Sun gets brighter with time and that increasing brightness will mess so much with Earth's climate that will cause the eventual extinction of life and loss of oceans much before it goes into red giant mode, the Sun that will shine 500 million years in the future, when the last chapter of the book takes place, will not be very different of the current one in size and luminosity and not the ferocious one Baxter describes, at least if stellar evolution models are right. See [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Solar_evolution_%28English%29.svg]]

''Evolution'' is a novel by StephenBaxter spanning 645 million years of Earth's history, with most chapters focusing on 65 million years ago to 30 million years in the future. The book is split into three parts: Ancestors, which focuses on various director ancestors to humans, starting with a ratlike animal that coexisted with the dinosaurs, Humans, which depicts various turning in human development, and Descendants, which is set AfterTheEnd.

* ArtisticLicenseAstronomy: While it's true the Sun gets brighter with time and that increasing brightness will mess so much with Earth's climate that will cause the eventual extinction of life and loss of oceans much before it goes red giant the Sun that will shine 500 million years in the future will not be very different of the current one in size and luminosity and not the ferocious one Baxter describes, at least if stellar evolution models are right. See [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Solar_evolution_%28English%29.svg]]

* ArtisticLicenseAstronomy: While it's true the Sun gets brighter with time and that increasing brightness will mess so much with Earth's climate that will cause the eventual extinction of life and loss of oceans, far before it goes red giant, the Sun that will shine 500 million years in the future will not very different of the current one in size and luminosity, not the ferocious one Baxter describes. See [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Solar_evolution_%28English%29.svg]]

* Ragnarok-Proofing: averted. Very little remains of human civilization except fossils and some very durable structures such as a cave or a gorge excavated to build a road.

* SomewhereAPalaeontologistIsCrying: While most of the time Baxter gets the science right, and the speculative leaps he takes are somewhat within the bounds of plausibility, a few examples must be mentioned. First of all, in the story about the sapient ''Ornitholestes'', he mentions that the only evidence humans had of these species is the disappearance of sauropods in the Late Jurassic, since the sapient species bones and technology are too fragile to preserve. Problem is, sauropods didn't go extinct in the Late Jurassic, not even in the Northern Hemisphere. There were as many sauropods infesting North America in the Early Cretaceous as there were in the Late Jurassic, including ''Astrodon'', ''Sauroposeidon'', and ''Sonorasaurus''.
** However there was a mass-extinction at the end of the Jurassic that claimed the dominant Jurassic sauropods, and the sauropods referred to in that story were all ''Diplodocus'', which did go extinct then. The phrase was 'the disappearance of ''the'' giant sauropods'. This could easily have meant just those specific species, not sauropods in general.
** The story about primates coming to North America has some anachronism and MisplacedWildlife in it too. Not only does it have indricotherid rhinos (native only to Asia), camels (who were only found in North America at this time), and such, it has gastornid birds inhabiting Oligocene-Miocene Africa...yes, even after these animals were supposed to have died out in the middle Eocene.
** In addition, the story involving ''Purgatorius'' has some flaws too. While Baxter does get it right by cloaking his troodonts in feathers, he leaves them off his dromaeosaurs. To add insult to injury, he makes the raptors cold-blooded, despite the fact that raptors are the very dinosaurs which ignited the cold blood, warm blood debate. In fact, even paleontologists who doubt endothermy in ornithischians and sauropods don't deny that raptors were most likely endothermic. And then there are the ''Giganotosaurus'' and ''Suchomimus'' in North America. Not only are these animals in the wrong place (''Giganotosaurus'' was from South America, ''Suchomimus'' from Africa), but they are from the wrong time, both species were from the Early Cretaceous.
*** The ''Giganotosaurus'' in that story was no less implausible that any of the other speculations not directly supported by fossil evidence Baxter uses, namely that a giganotosaur species whose fossil remains had not been found by modern human paleontologists, descended from the known early ''Giganotosaurus'' finds, survived to the end of the Cretaceous and migrated to North America across the land bridge between North and South America when it formed in the late Cretaceous. Similarly the ''Suchomimus'' is a not implausible speculation that a member of that particular family did in fact live in North America, though only fossils from the African branch of the family have so far been found. This is certainly possible since similar pairs of "sister taxa" in North America and Africa are known for many other dinosaur families, and the origins of these families date back to when North America and Africa were connected.

* SleptThroughTheApocalypse

* JustBeforeTheEnd: "A Far Distant Futurity" set 500 million years into the future, when the continents of earth have merged into a hot, flat, dry supercontinent that resembles the surface of Mars, and life is on the decline. "Last Contact", "The Dying Light" and the epilogue also count, for the end of the Neanderthals, Ancient Rome, and humanity respectively.

* AlasPoorYorick: Mother digs out his child's skull and cradles it, later she starts using it as a totem to gain influence over her tribe.

* DownerEnding: Many resolutions to the individual chapters. The novel itself ends with the death of the last primate to reproduce, and might count depending on whether you care about bacteria seeding new life or robot civilisations.

* GiantFlyer: The air whale, a giant pterosaur that lives in the stratosphere and leaves no fossil evidence behind.

* SomewhereAPalaeontologistIsCrying: While most of the time Baxter gets the science right, and the speculative leaps he takes are somewhat within the bounds of plausibility, a few examples must be mentioned. First of all, in the story about the sapient ''Ornitholestes'', he mentions that the only evidence humans had of these species is the disappearance of sauropods in the Late Jurassic, since the sapient species bones and technology are too fragile to preserve. Problem is, sauropods didn't go extinct in the Late Jurassic, not even in the Northern Hemisphere. There were as many sauropods infesting North America in the Early Cretaceous as there were in the Late Jurassic, including ''Paluxysaurus'', ''Sauroposeidon'', and ''Sonorasaurus''.

** Class X: Planetary Annihilation: Mars gets it from some self-replicating robots that humans sent to Mars soon before dying out. The robots go on to create a civilisation that lasts much, much longer than humanity did. In the flash-forward mentioned above, the Earth is also destroyed by the dying Sun.

* BittersweetEnding: All the primates are dead, along with all life on Earth, and all recognisable traces of humans are long gone, but they're suceeded by a mechanical civilisation, and bacteria from Earth seeded life on new worlds.

** Class X: Planetary Annihilation: Mars gets it from some self-replicating robots that humans sent to Mars soon before dying out. The robots go on to create a civilisation that lasts much, much longer than humanity did.

** Class 5: Planetary Extinction and Class 6: Planetary Desolation: In the flash-foward near the end of the book, the planet gets so hot that only bacteria are able to survive, then so hot that nothing can survive.