A New History of Life: The Radical New Discoveries about the Origins and Evolution of Life on Earth

by Peter Ward, Joe Kirschvink

Overview

Charles Darwin's theories, first published more than 150 years ago, still set the paradigm of how we understand the evolution of life—but scientific advances of recent decades have radically altered that understanding. In fact the currently accepted history of life on Earth is flawed and out of date. Now two pioneering scientists, one already an award-winning popular author, deliver an eye-opening narrative that synthesizes a generation's worth of insights from new research.

Writing with zest, humor, and clarity, Ward and Kirschvink show that many of our long-held beliefs about the history of life are wrong. Three central themes emerge from the narrative. First, the development of life was not a stately, gradual process: Catastrophe, argue Ward and Kirschvink, shaped life's history more than all other forces combined—from notorious events like the sudden extinction of dinosaurs to recently discovered ones like "Snowball Earth" and the "Great Oxygenation Event." One startling possibility: that life arrived on Earth from Mars. Second, life consists of carbon, but three other molecules have determined how it evolved: oxygen, carbon dioxide, and hydrogen sulfide are carbon's silent partners. Third, ever since Darwin we have thought of evolution in terms of species. Yet it is the evolution of ecosystems—from deep-ocean vents to rainforests—that has formed the living world as we know it.

Drawing on their years of experience in paleontology, biology, chemistry, and astrobiology, Ward and Kirschvink tell a story of life on Earth that is at once too fabulous to imagine and too familiar to dismiss. And in a provocative coda, they assemble discoveries from the latest cutting-edge research to imagine how the history of life might unfold deep into the future.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781608199075
Publisher:	Bloomsbury USA
Publication date:	03/10/2015
Pages:	400
Product dimensions:	6.40(w) x 9.40(h) x 1.50(d)

About the Author

Peter Ward is a professor of biology and of Earth and space sciences at the University of Washington in Seattle, and has authored seventeen books, among them the prizewinning Rare Earth: Why Complex Life Is Uncommon in the Universe, with Donald Brownlee. He also teaches as the University of Adelaide in Australia, and has received the Jim Shea Award for popular science writing. He lives in Washington. Joe Kirschvink is the Nico and Marilyn Van Wingen professor of geobiology at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. His pioneering work includes formulating and naming the "Snowball Earth" hypothesis. He is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the American Geophysical Union. He lives in Pasadena, California.

Table of Contents

Introduction 1

Chapter I Telling Time 8

Chapter II Becoming an Earthlike Planet: 4.6-4.5 GA 14

Chapter III Life, Death, and the Newly Discovered Place In Between 28

Chapter IV Forming Life: 4.2(?)-3.5 GA 43

Chapter V From Origin to Oxygenation: 3.5-2.0 GA 65

Chapter VI The Long Road to Animals: 2.0-1.0 GA 90

Chapter VII The Cryogenian and the Evolution of Animals: 850-635 MA 100

Chapter VIII The Cambrian Explosion: 600-500 MA 120

Chapter IX The Ordovician-Devonian Expansion of Animals: 500-360 MA 148

Chapter X Tiktaalik and the Invasion of the Land: 475-300 MA 165

Chapter XI The Age of Arthropods: 350-300 MA 190

Chapter XII The Great Dying-Anoxia and Global Stagnation: 252-250 MA 211

Chapter XIII The Triassic Explosion: 252-200 MA 225

Chapter XIV Dinosaur Hegemony in a Low-Oxygen World: 230-180 MA 245

Chapter XV The Greenhouse Oceans: 200-65 MA 278

Chapter XVI Death of the Dinasaurs: 65 MA 296

Chapter XVII The Long-Delayed Third Age of Mammals: 65-50 MA 307

Chapter XVIII The Age of Birds: 50-2.5 MA 320

Chapter XIX Humanity and the Tenth Extinction: 2.5 MA to present 329

Chapter XX The Knowable Futures of Earth Life 345

Notes 357

Index 382

Editorial Reviews

Ward describes the disastrous changes that can be expected as sea levels continue their accelerating rise due to global warming . . . a blunt, vivid warning.” —Kirkus Reviews on The Flooded Earth

“A beautifully written, thoroughly research and relentlessly terrifying work, and a must-read for anybody with an interest in the environment or the future of our planet.” —Salon.com on The Flooded Earth

“Ward describes the disastrous changes that can be expected as sea levels continue their accelerating rise due to global warming… a blunt, vivid warning.” —Kirkus Reviews on THE FLOODED EARTH

“A beautifully written, thoroughly research and relentlessly terrifying work, and a must-read for anybody with an interest in the environment or the future of our planet.” —Salon.com on THE FLOODED EARTH

From the Publisher