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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.



About the Author

Andrew H. Knoll

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.



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