A (Very) Short History of Life On Earth: 4.6 Billion Years in 12 Chapters

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Latin names for many of these earlier creatures may overwhelm some readers, but Dr Gee’s vivid descriptions of these plants and animals provide fascinating mental images of these beings that lived so long ago, such as the land-dwelling amphibian, Eryops, “which looked like a bullfrog imagining itself as an alligator.

The pull of gravity squeezed the gas at the cloud’s center so much that atoms began to fuse together. Eventually some of these animals using carbon developed armour, which we can see most notably in trilobites and ammonites later. It does as well as it is possible to do in terms of making somewhat comprehensible the enormous span of that time. Like Neils Bohr and others, I believe that prediction is difficult, especially about the future, and I prefer the less definitive figure.HUMANS: the story of Homo sapiens, is it for more than a quarter of 1 million years of failure, and at the first 98% of our existence, the tale of Homo sapiens, as one of heart-breaking tragedy, had any of the participants survived to tell the tale. This is now the best book available about the huge changes in our planet and its living creatures, over the billions of years of the Earth’s existence . The first time I read it, it took me a while as I made the point of looking up on my phone every creature mentioned, and I recommend doing that too. To the earliest life, which had evolved in an ocean and beneath an atmosphere essentially without free oxygen, it spelled environmental catastrophe.

In the tradition of Richard Dawkins, Bill Bryson, and Simon Winchester—An entertaining and uniquely informed narration of Life's life story. Henry Gee’s whistle-stop account of the story of life (and death — lots of death) on Earth is both fun and informative. As a mouth developed, teeth became an effective way of grinding down food so that it could be digested easily in the stomach. This book gives a fascinating and easily understandable overview of the rise and progress of life on Earth. From Chapter 7 on, and the dawn of the dinosaurs, the material becomes vaguely familiar and thus easier to get a 'handle' on.

The argument for our disappearance is based on, amongst other things, a combination of falling birthrate and declining carbon dioxide levels. This book created great visual imagery in my mind - I think this story would make an amazing and awe inspiring animation - get to it someone! This was haphazard at first but gradually became more predictable as a result of the development of an internal chemical template that could be copied and passed down to new generations of membrane-bound bubbles.