When the Earth Was Green: Plants, Animals, and Evolution's Greatest Romance

by Riley Black

Overview

Winner, A Friend of Darwin Award, 2024

A gorgeously composed look at the longstanding relationship between prehistoric plants and life on Earth

Fossils plants allow us to touch the lost worlds from billions of years of evolutionary backstory. Each petrified leaf and root show us that dinosaurs, saber-toothed cats, and even humans would not exist without the evolutionary efforts of their leafy counterparts. It has been the constant growth of plants that have allowed so many of our favorite, fascinating prehistoric creatures to evolve, oxygenating the atmosphere, coaxing animals onto land, and forming the forests that shaped our ancestors’ anatomy. It is impossible to understand our history without them. Or, our future.

Using the same scientifically-informed narrative technique that readers loved in the award-winning The Last Days of the Dinosaurs, in When the Earth Was Green, Riley Black brings readers back in time to prehistoric seas, swamps, forests, and savannas where critical moments in plant evolution unfolded. Each chapter stars plants and animals alike, underscoring how the interactions between species have helped shape the world we call home. As the chapters move upwards in time, Black guides readers along the burgeoning trunk of the Tree of Life, stopping to appreciate branches of an evolutionary story that links the world we know with one we can only just perceive now through the silent stone, from ancient roots to the present.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781250288998
Publisher:	St. Martin's Publishing Group
Publication date:	02/25/2025
Pages:	304
Sales rank:	75,341
Product dimensions:	5.70(w) x 8.50(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

RILEY BLACK has been heralded as “one of our premier gifted young science writers” and is the critically-acclaimed author of Skeleton Keys, My Beloved Brontosaurus, Written in Stone, and When Dinosaurs Ruled. A science correspondent for Smithsonian Magazine,

Riley has become a widely-recognized expert on paleontology and has appeared on programs such as NOVA, Science Friday, and All Things Considered. When not writing about fossils, Riley joins museum crews to find new fossils across the American west.

Editorial Reviews

★ 12/02/2024

In this striking study, science writer Black (The Last Days of the Dinosaurs) presents vignettes illustrating the complex interplay between animals, plants, and the environment from 1.2 billion through 15,000 years ago. An account of a proto-dinosaur’s wanderings around a forest of araucarioxylon trees 220 million years ago details how the conifers thrived in a warming world by growing massive root systems able to withstand frequent wildfires. Describing a jeholornis bird feasting on a magnolia flower 125 million years ago, Black discusses how early birds took to swallowing seeds whole after losing their teeth, helping plants spread farther than they’d previously been able to. The entries emphasize chance’s prominent role in evolution. For instance, Black imagines a saber-toothed cat chowing down on catnip and notes that the plant initially evolved to produce the chemical compound that intoxicates felines as a defense against insects, who are repulsed by the substance. Black excels at packaging science for lay readers, weaving illuminating natural history into sparkling descriptions of what the Earth was like millions of years ago (“The humid, dew-dappled forests that have cradled... Cretaceous survivors are shifting now, the greenhouse world becoming one where a persistent and sweltering summer is feeling the aches of seasonal change once more”). This is another triumph from Black. Illus. Agent: Deirdre Mullane, Mullane Literary. (Feb.)

Publishers Weekly

Praise for When the Earth was Green:

"Black’s creative writing style and vivid descriptions, paired with well-chosen scientific facts, transport readers to verdant, sometimes violent scenes from our planet’s past." —Booklist

"BLACK IS A POET OF PREHISTORY, narrating the final moments of a gooey mosquito or the accidental, tree-bound voyage of a monkey with the detail of someone who was there and saw it all, millions of years ago.... This is a book steeped with vegetal beauty, one that unfurls like a flower, blooming." —Sabrina Imbler, author of How Far the Light Reaches and staff writer at Defector

“BRILLIANT, BRIMMING WITH INSIGHT, and boundlessly entertaining. Black launches a grand tour of deep time, surveying the influence of plant life on animal evolution (and vice versa). It’s a 1.2 billion-year fandango, masterfully chronicled.” —Jason Roberts, author of Every Living Thing and A Sense of the World

“AN ESSENTIAL, EXTRAORDINARY STORY...Black shows us how the natural world has always been a splendid, entangled scrum of interactions and transactions." —Daniel Lewis, author of Twelve Trees, Dibner Senior Curator for the History of Science and Technology, Huntington Library

"WHAT A BEAUTIFUL BOOK! I couldn’t put it down. Black has crafted a prose so vivid and precise that it feels more like watching a film. Through Black’s "vignettes," the reader is taken on a breathtaking exploration of life's interconnectedness." —Paco Calvo, author of Planta Sapiens

Praise for The Last Days of the Dinosaurs:

Winner 2023 AAAS/Subaru Prize for Excellence in Science Writing

"Black blends the intricacies of science with masterful storytelling for a cracking, enchanting read." —Newsweek

"This is top-drawer science writing." —Publishers Weekly, starred review

"Exquisitely written." —Booklist

From the Publisher