Future Evolution is a book written by paleontologist Peter Ward

Peter Ward (paleontologist)

Peter Douglas Ward is a paleontologist and professor of Biology and of Earth and Space Sciences at the University of Washington, Seattle, and has written popular science works for a general audience. He is also an adviser to the Microbes Mind Forum....

 and illustrated by Alexis Rockman

Alexis Rockman

Alexis Rockman is an American contemporary artist known for his paintings that provide rich depictions of future landscapes as they might exist with impacts of climate change and evolution influenced by genetic engineering. He has exhibited his work in the United States since 1985, including a...

. He addresses his own opinion of future

Future

The future is the indefinite time period after the present. Its arrival is considered inevitable due to the existence of time and the laws of physics. Due to the nature of the reality and the unavoidability of the future, everything that currently exists and will exist is temporary and will come...

 evolution

Evolution

Evolution is any change across successive generations in the heritable characteristics of biological populations. Evolutionary processes give rise to diversity at every level of biological organisation, including species, individual organisms and molecules such as DNA and proteins.Life on Earth...

 and compares it with Dougal Dixon

Dougal Dixon

-Biography:Dixon studied geology and palaeontology at the University of St. Andrews and is best known for his illustrated works of speculative fiction, which largely concern "zoologies of the future": his own visions of how human beings and animals might evolve in millions of years' time...

's After Man: A Zoology of the Future

After Man: A Zoology of the Future

After Man: A Zoology of the Future is a 1981 book by the Scottish geologist and author, Dougal Dixon. In it, he presents his hypothesis on how the fauna and geography could change 50 million years from now.-Geography of the future:...

and H. G. Wells

H. G. Wells

Herbert George Wells was an English author, now best known for his work in the science fiction genre. He was also a prolific writer in many other genres, including contemporary novels, history, politics and social commentary, even writing text books and rules for war games...

's The Time Machine

The Time Machine

The Time Machine is a science fiction novella by H. G. Wells, published in 1895 for the first time and later adapted into at least two feature films of the same name, as well as two television versions, and a large number of comic book adaptations. It indirectly inspired many more works of fiction...

.

According to Ward, humanity may exist for a long time. Nevertheless we are impacting our world. He splits his book in different chronologies, starting with the near future (the next 1,000 years). Humanity would be struggling to support a massive population of 11 billion. Global warming

Global warming

Global warming refers to the rising average temperature of Earth's atmosphere and oceans and its projected continuation. In the last 100 years, Earth's average surface temperature increased by about with about two thirds of the increase occurring over just the last three decades...

 raises sea levels. The ozone

Ozone

Ozone , or trioxygen, is a triatomic molecule, consisting of three oxygen atoms. It is an allotrope of oxygen that is much less stable than the diatomic allotrope...

 layer weakens. Most of the available land

Land (economics)

In economics, land comprises all naturally occurring resources whose supply is inherently fixed. Examples are any and all particular geographical locations, mineral deposits, and even geostationary orbit locations and portions of the electromagnetic spectrum. Natural resources are fundamental to...

 is devoted to agriculture

Agriculture

Agriculture is the cultivation of animals, plants, fungi and other life forms for food, fiber, and other products used to sustain life. Agriculture was the key implement in the rise of sedentary human civilization, whereby farming of domesticated species created food surpluses that nurtured the...

 due to the demand for food

Food

Food is any substance consumed to provide nutritional support for the body. It is usually of plant or animal origin, and contains essential nutrients, such as carbohydrates, fats, proteins, vitamins, or minerals...

. Despite all this, the oceanic wildlife remains untethered by most of these impacts, specifically the commercial farmed fish

Fish farming

Fish farming is the principal form of aquaculture, while other methods may fall under mariculture. Fish farming involves raising fish commercially in tanks or enclosures, usually for food. A facility that releases young fish into the wild for recreational fishing or to supplement a species'...

. This is, according to Ward, an era of extinction

Extinction

In biology and ecology, extinction is the end of an organism or of a group of organisms , normally a species. The moment of extinction is generally considered to be the death of the last individual of the species, although the capacity to breed and recover may have been lost before this point...

 that would last about 10 million years (note that many human-caused extinctions have already occurred). After that, the world gets stranger.

Ward labels the species that have the potential to survive in a human-infested world. These include dandelions, raccoon

Raccoon

Procyon is a genus of nocturnal mammals, comprising three species commonly known as raccoons, in the family Procyonidae. The most familiar species, the common raccoon , is often known simply as "the" raccoon, as the two other raccoon species in the genus are native only to the tropics and are...

s, owl

Owl

Owls are a group of birds that belong to the order Strigiformes, constituting 200 bird of prey species. Most are solitary and nocturnal, with some exceptions . Owls hunt mostly small mammals, insects, and other birds, although a few species specialize in hunting fish...

s, pig

Pig

A pig is any of the animals in the genus Sus, within the Suidae family of even-toed ungulates. Pigs include the domestic pig, its ancestor the wild boar, and several other wild relatives...

s, cattle

Cattle

Cattle are the most common type of large domesticated ungulates. They are a prominent modern member of the subfamily Bovinae, are the most widespread species of the genus Bos, and are most commonly classified collectively as Bos primigenius...

, rat

Rat

Rats are various medium-sized, long-tailed rodents of the superfamily Muroidea. "True rats" are members of the genus Rattus, the most important of which to humans are the black rat, Rattus rattus, and the brown rat, Rattus norvegicus...

s, snake

Snake

Snakes are elongate, legless, carnivorous reptiles of the suborder Serpentes that can be distinguished from legless lizards by their lack of eyelids and external ears. Like all squamates, snakes are ectothermic, amniote vertebrates covered in overlapping scales...

s, and crow

Crow

Crows form the genus Corvus in the family Corvidae. Ranging in size from the relatively small pigeon-size jackdaws to the Common Raven of the Holarctic region and Thick-billed Raven of the highlands of Ethiopia, the 40 or so members of this genus occur on all temperate continents and several...

s to name but a few. In the human-infested ecosystem

Ecosystem

An ecosystem is a biological environment consisting of all the organisms living in a particular area, as well as all the nonliving , physical components of the environment with which the organisms interact, such as air, soil, water and sunlight....

, those preadapted to live amongst man survived and prospered. Ward describes garbage dumps in the future infested with multiple species of rats, a snake with a sticky frog-like tongue to snap up rodents, and pigs with snouts specialized for rooting through garbage. The story's time traveller who views this new refuse-covered habitat is gruesomely attacked by ravenous flesh-eating crows.

Ward then questions the potential for humanity to evolve into a new species. According to him, this is incredibly unlikely. For this to happen a human population must isolate itself and interbreed until it becomes a new species. Then he questions if humanity would survive or extinguish itself by climate change

Climate change

Climate change is a significant and lasting change in the statistical distribution of weather patterns over periods ranging from decades to millions of years. It may be a change in average weather conditions or the distribution of events around that average...

, nuclear war

Nuclear warfare

Nuclear warfare, or atomic warfare, is a military conflict or political strategy in which nuclear weaponry is detonated on an opponent. Compared to conventional warfare, nuclear warfare can be vastly more destructive in range and extent of damage...

, disease

Disease

A disease is an abnormal condition affecting the body of an organism. It is often construed to be a medical condition associated with specific symptoms and signs. It may be caused by external factors, such as infectious disease, or it may be caused by internal dysfunctions, such as autoimmune...

, or the posing threat of nanotechnology

Nanotechnology

Nanotechnology is the study of manipulating matter on an atomic and molecular scale. Generally, nanotechnology deals with developing materials, devices, or other structures possessing at least one dimension sized from 1 to 100 nanometres...

as terrorist weapons.