BookShared
  • MEMBER AREA    
  • Life on a Young Planet: The First Three Billion Years of Evolution on Earth (Princeton Science Library)

    (By Andrew H. Knoll)

    Book Cover Watermark PDF Icon Read Ebook
    ×
    Size 27 MB (27,086 KB)
    Format PDF
    Downloaded 668 times
    Last checked 14 Hour ago!
    Author Andrew H. Knoll
    “Book Descriptions:

    Australopithecines, dinosaurs, trilobites--such fossils conjure up images of lost worlds filled with vanished organisms. But in the full history of life, ancient animals, even the trilobites, form only the half-billion-year tip of a nearly four-billion-year iceberg. Andrew Knoll explores the deep history of life from its origins on a young planet to the incredible Cambrian explosion, presenting a compelling new explanation for the emergence of biological novelty.


    The very latest discoveries in paleontology--many of them made by the author and his students--are integrated with emerging insights from molecular biology and earth system science to forge a broad understanding of how the biological diversity that surrounds us came to be. Moving from Siberia to Namibia to the Bahamas, Knoll shows how life and environment have evolved together through Earth's history. Innovations in biology have helped shape our air and oceans, and, just as surely, environmental change has influenced the course of evolution, repeatedly closing off opportunities for some species while opening avenues for others.


    Readers go into the field to confront fossils, enter the lab to discern the inner workings of cells, and alight on Mars to ask how our terrestrial experience can guide exploration for life beyond our planet. Along the way, Knoll brings us up-to-date on some of science's hottest questions, from the oldest fossils and claims of life beyond the Earth to the hypothesis of global glaciation and Knoll's own unifying concept of ''permissive ecology.''


    In laying bare Earth's deepest biological roots, Life on a Young Planet helps us understand our own place in the universe--and our responsibility as stewards of a world four billion years in the making.


    In a new preface, Knoll describes how the field has broadened and deepened in the decade since the book's original publication.

    Google Drive Logo DRIVE
    Book 1

    The Rise and Reign of the Mammals: A New History, from the Shadow of the Dinosaurs to Us

    ★★★★★

    Steve Brusatte

    Book 1

    The Mind of a Bee

    ★★★★★

    Lars Chittka

    Book 1

    Cro-Magnon: How the Ice Age Gave Birth to the First Modern Humans

    ★★★★★

    Brian M. Fagan

    Book 1

    Beasts Before Us: The Untold Story of Mammal Origins and Evolution

    ★★★★★

    Elsa Panciroli

    Book 1

    Squid Empire: The Rise and Fall of the Cephalopods

    ★★★★★

    Danna Staaf

    Book 1

    The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs: A New History of a Lost World

    ★★★★★

    Steve Brusatte

    Book 1

    Dinosaurs Rediscovered: The Scientific Revolution in Paleontology (The Rediscovered Series)

    ★★★★★

    Michael J. Benton

    Book 1

    Otherlands: A Journey Through Earth's Extinct Worlds

    ★★★★★

    Thomas Halliday

    Book 1

    Super Volcanoes: What They Reveal about Earth and the Worlds Beyond

    ★★★★★

    Robin George Andrews

    Book 1

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

    ★★★★★

    Peter D. Ward

    Book 1

    The Brilliant Abyss

    ★★★★★

    Helen Scales

    Book 1

    Deep: Freediving, Renegade Science, and What the Ocean Tells Us about Ourselves

    ★★★★★

    James Nestor

    Book 1

    Iron Council (New Crobuzon, #3)

    ★★★★★

    China Miéville

    Book 1

    Time Reborn: From the Crisis in Physics to the Future of the Universe

    ★★★★★

    Lee Smolin

    Book 1

    How Language Began: The Story of Humanity's Greatest Invention

    ★★★★★

    Daniel L. Everett

    Book 1

    A Brief History of Black Holes: And why nearly everything you know about them is wrong

    ★★★★★

    Becky Smethurst

    Book 1

    Becoming Human: A Theory of Ontogeny

    ★★★★★

    Michael Tomasello