Life on a Young Planet
Andrew H. Knoll is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the Fisher Professor of Natural History at Harvard University. He is a trained paleontologist who has spent more than two decades working to integrate geological and biological perspectives on the origins of life.
Australopithecines, dinosaurs, and trilobites—such fossils evoke images of lost worlds teeming with extinct organisms. However, in the grand scheme of things, ancient animals, even trilobites, are only the tip of a nearly four-billion-year iceberg. Andrew Knoll delves into the deep history of life, from its origins on a young planet to the amazing Cambrian explosion, offering a compelling new explanation for the emergence of biological novelty.
The most recent paleontological discoveries, many of which were made by the author and his students, are combined with emerging insights from molecular biology and earth system science to provide a comprehensive understanding of how the biological diversity that surrounds us came to be. From Siberia to Namibia to the Bahamas, Knoll demonstrates how life and the environment have coevolved throughout Earth's history. Biology innovations have helped shape our air and oceans, and environmental change has influenced the course of evolution, repeatedly closing doors for some species while opening doors for others.
Readers travel to the field to confront fossils, to the lab to learn about the inner workings of cells, and to Mars to consider how our terrestrial experience can guide the search for life beyond our planet. Along the way, Knoll updates us on some of science's most pressing issues, from the oldest fossils and claims of life beyond the Earth to the global glaciation hypothesis and Knoll's own unifying concept of "permissive ecology."
Life on a Young Planet explains our place in the universe and our responsibility as stewards of a world four billion years in the making by exposing Earth's deepest biological roots. Knoll describes how the field has broadened and deepened in the decade since the book's original publication in a new preface.
Author: Andrew H. Knoll
Link to buy: https://www.amazon.com/Life-Young-Planet-Evolution-Princeton/dp/069116553X/
Ratings: 4.5 out of 5 stars (from 189 reviews)
Best Sellers Rank: #498,067 in Books
#151 in Paleontology (Books)
#299 in Geology (Books)
#1,494 in Biology (Books)
