About this item
"A fantastic distillation of Earth's history, from one of the world's leading geologists. Engrossing, witty, and eminently readable." - Steve Brusatte, author of The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs Odds are, where you're standing was once cooking under a roiling sea of lava, crushed by a towering sheet of ice, rocked by a nearby meteor strike, or perhaps choked by poison gases, drowned beneath ocean, perched atop a mountain range, or roamed by fearsome monsters. Probably most or even all of the above. Indeed, the story of our home planet and the organisms spread across its surface is far more spectacular than any Hollywood blockbuster, filled with enough plot twists to rival a bestselling thriller. But only recently have we begun to piece together the whole mystery into a coherent narrative.
About the Author
Andrew H. Knoll is the Fisher Professor of Natural History at Harvard University. His research focuses on the early evolution of life, Earth's early environmental history, and the interconnections between the two. Knoll has also contributed to our understanding of mass extinction, the evolution of life on land, and biomineralization, and he served on the science team for NASA's MER mission to Mars. Honors include the Walcott and Thompson medals of the US National Academy of Sciences, the Paleontological Society Medal, the Wollaston Medal of the Geological Society (London) , the Sven Berggren Prize of Royal Physiographic Society, Sweden, and the International Prize for Biology. A member of the US National Academy of Sciences and foreign member of the Royal Society of London, Knoll received the Phi Beta Kappa Book Award in Science for Life on a Young Planet.
