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By one of Britain's most gifted scientists, a magnificently
daring and compulsively readable account of life on Earth (from the "big
bang" to the advent of man), based on the most original of all sources --
the evidence of fossils. With excitement and driving
intelligence, Richard Fortey guides us from the barren globe spinning in space,
through the very earliest signs of life in the sulphurous hot springs and volcanic
vents of the young planet, the appearance of cells, the slow creation of an atmosphere
and the evolution of myriad forms of plants and animals that could then be sustained,
including the magnificent era of the dinosaurs, and on to the last moment before
the debut of Homo sapiens. Ranging across multiple
scientific disciplines, explicating in wonderfully clear and refreshing prose
their findings and arguments -- about the origins of life, the causes of species
extinctions and the first appearance of man -- Fortey weaves this history out
of the most delicate traceries left in rock, stone and earth. He also explains
how, on each aspect of nature and life, scientists have reached the understanding
we have today, who made the key discoveries, who their opponents were and why
certain ideas won. Brimful of wit, fascinating personal
experience and high scholarship, this book may well be our best introduction yet
to the complex history of life on Earth. Richard Fortey
is a senior palaeontologist at the Natural History Museum in London. He is the
author of several books, including Fossils: A Key to the Past and The
Hidden Landscape, which was named the Natural World Book of the Year in 1993.
In 1997 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society. |
