The History of Life: A Very Short Introduction: A Very Short Introduction (Very Short Introductions) | 
 enlarge | Author: Michael J. Benton
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Category: Book
List Price: $11.95
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Sales Rank: 107749
Media: Paperback
Edition: 1
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 144
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.3
Dimensions (in): 6.9 x 4.3 x 0.6
ISBN: 0199226326
Dewey Decimal Number: 560
EAN: 9780199226320
ASIN: 0199226326
Publication Date: December 15, 2008 (New: Last 30 Days)
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Product Description
Here is the extraordinary story of the unfolding of life on Earth, told by Michael J. Benton, a world-renowned authority on biodiversity. Ranging over four billion years, Benton weaves together the latest findings on fossils, earth history, evolutionary biology, and many other fields to highlight the great leaps that enabled life to evolve from microbe to human--big breakthroughs that made whole new ways of life possible--including cell division and multicellularity, hard skeletons, the move to land, the origin of forests, the move to the air. He describes the mass extinctions, especially the Permian, which obliterated 90% of life, and he sheds light on the origins of human beings, and of the many hominids that went before us. He ends by pointing out that studying the past helps us to predict the future: what happens if the atmosphere warms by 5 degrees? What happens if we destroy much of the biodiversity on Earth? These things have happened before, Benton notes. We need only look to the distant past to know the future of life on Earth.
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