A Short History of Planet Earth - Mountains, Mammals, Fire, and Ice

Softcover  VI, 266 Pages  ISBN 0471197033      £12.00

"A splendid introduction to geology and paleontology for the lay reader. To compress Earth's history into a single, lucidly written volume is a major achievement."
Publishers Weekly, starred review.

"Few people have both the knowledge and the writing ability to capture such a long and varied history in a compelling manner. In A Short History of Planet Earth, J.D. demonstrates that he is one of the few."
Earth.

This exhilarating survey of the four and half billion years of Earth's history charts both the geological and biological history of the planet. It moves from the origin of the earth's iron core to the formation of today's seven continents, and from the primordial building blocks of life to the evolution of the human form.

J.D. MACDOUGALL (San Diego, California) is a professor of earth science at the Scripps Oceanographic Institute of the University of California, San Diego, the premier center for earth science research in the U.S. His work has appeared in Scientific American and the McGraw-Hill Encyclopedia of Science and Technology.

From the contents

Reading the Rocks.

Early Days.

Wonderful Life.

The Proterozoic Eon.

Dance of the Plates.

Nature's Timepieces.

The Cambrian Explosion.

Fish, Forest, and Gondwanaland: The Paleozoic Era.

From Pangea to (Almost) the Modern World: The Mesozoic Era.

Global Catastrophes.

Mammals, Mountains, and Ice: The Cenozoic Era.

The Great Ice Age.

What Comes Next?: Geology and Man.

Glossary.

Further Reading.

Index.