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

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If one continues to read, past the end of the book, and into the epilogue the tone changes, it is not all death and despair, and Dr. Gee even points out that he is only discussing life on THIS planet, not denying it could be found elsewhere, or that even we humans, despite how challenging may be able to find a habitable location elsewhere in this galaxy and beyond. I share a slightly more hopeful view, I think our species, as inventive as it is, will find a way, as it always has. For better or worse we are a species that is always on the edge, on the edge of immense technological power, or on the edge of complete destruction. When Humans are pushed to extreme lengths and life or death situations, as a species we seem to find a way. And I do not see that coming to an end any time soon. A (Very) Short History of Life non-Earth: 4.6 Billion Years in 12 Pithy Chaptersis an excellentbook I would recommend to all readers who find themselves interested in the history of Earth. From the extremely distant past and the start of life itself, to what may be our last battle on this planet, it is poignant and critical to understand where we are now, and why we have the challenges that we face today. In the scheme of things, we are a small blip, but as Dr. Gee says, and as is quoted in the book, this just makes it an even more convincing time to give life everything we have got.

And the human interior, despite its wide variation in acidity and temperature, is, in bacterial terms, a gentle place. There are bacteria for which the temperature of a boiling kettle is as a balmy spring day. There are bacteria that thrive on crude oil, on solvents that cause cancer in humans, or even in nuclear waste. There are bacteria that can survive the vacuum of space, violent extremes of temperature or pressure, and entombment inside grains of salt—and do so for millions of years.14 In writing this book, Henry Gee had a lot to live up to. His earlier title The Accidental Species was a superbly readable and fascinating description of the evolutionary process leading to Homo sapiens. It seemed hard to beat - but he has succeeded with what is inevitably going to be described as a tour-de-force.Schade, dass es außer den schematischen Karten der Erdzeitalter keine Illustrationen gibt, die diese Vielfalt auch optisch verdeutlichen, obwohl die für ein Sachbuch durchaus bildhafte Schreibweise doch die Vorstellungskraft anregt. Wer als Kind mit Dinosauriern auf du und du war, ist hier klar im Vorteil. Der Anspruch, das zeigt schon der Titel, ist nicht, das endgültige Buch über die Geschichte des Lebens auf der Erde zu schreiben, sondern einen Abriss in für Laien verständlicher Form zu geben und eine Einordnung zu versuchen. Skipping ahead, we go through time, from one great extinction to another, and we learn of some of the fantastic beasts and creatures that lived in-between them. Their rise and fall. We discuss the dinosaurs, these amazing creatures, and how they evolved into the titans that they were. We explore ideas and continue on through time, viewing it all like a window passing by, we see the dinosaurs die. We see the world go through the tumult as it had never been through before. The asteroid that wiped the earth out, would be the key in setting up our deep ancestors for success, which eventually would lead to us. this book is like a tldr of earths history - geological history, evolutionary history. the concepts can be so difficult to grasp at times, I felt like wanting to know why a certain thing happened a little bit more, not just read in a sentence. Once upon a time, a giant star was dying. It had been burning for millions of years; now the fusion furnace at its core had no more fuel to burn. The star created the energy it needed to shine by fusing hydrogen atoms to make helium. The energy produced by the fusion did more than make the star shine. It was vital to counteract the inward pull of the star’s own gravity. When the supply of available hydrogen began to run low, the star began to fuse helium into atoms of heavier elements such as carbon and oxygen. By then, though, the star was running out of things to burn. definitely feels rushed at several chapters (especially chapter 3, 4), with a lot of facts that fit well into the bigger picture, but many of those facts are well forgotten.

If you have already watched David Attenborough’s Life/Origin of life or Neil deGrasse’s Cosmos docuseries like me, then this book will act as a fantastic recap of the complex history of life on earth. If you haven’t watched the above-mentioned docuseries, then this book will be an absolute delight for anybody interested in natural history. Also, I highly recommend watching these awesome docuseries in the soothing voice of Mr. Attenborough and Mr. Tyson. Unlike carbon dioxide, oxygen might be thought of as an all-round good thing, essential to life on Earth. And yet it was a sudden surge of free oxygen that caused the Great Oxidation Event, unleashing the first of many mass extinctions that pepper the history of this planet. All that oxygen scrubbed the air of the carbon dioxide and methane that were keeping Earth warm and launched the first and longest ice age, 300 million years during which the planet became ‘Snowball Earth’, covered from pole to pole with ice. ‘And yet,’ observes Gee calmly, ‘the Great Oxidation Event and subsequent “Snowball Earth” episode were the kinds of apocalyptic disasters in which life on Earth has always thrived.’ Life began in a world that was warm11 but soundless apart from the wind and the sea. The wind stirred an air almost entirely free from oxygen. With no protective ozone layer in the upper atmosphere, the Sun’s ultraviolet rays sterilized everything above the surface of the sea or anything less than a few centimeters beneath the surface. As a means of defense, the cyanobacterial colonies evolved pigments to absorb these harmful rays. Once their energy had been absorbed, it could be put to work. The cyanobacteria used it to drive chemical reactions. Some of these fused carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen atoms together to create sugars and starch. This is the process we call photosynthesis. Harm had become harvest. in chapter 3 for example, author uses a tons of extinct species to tell facts of evolutionary history, it becomes difficult to imagine them in a sentence of information, most of them you might have never heard of them. so it made sense to constantly look at Google images to see what he was telling about. majority of facts won't even stay in your head as a lot of these species won't live more than a sentence or two In plants today, the energy-harvesting pigment is called chlorophyll. Solar energy is used to split water into its constituent hydrogen and oxygen, releasing more energy to drive further chemical reactions. In the earliest days of the Earth, however, the raw materials were just as likely to have been minerals containing iron or sulfur. The best, however, was and remains the most abundant—water. But there was a catch. The photosynthesis of water produces as a waste product a colorless, odorless gas that burns anything it touches. This gas is one of the deadliest substances in the universe. Its name? Free oxygen, or O2.Another masterful aspect of the structure is the way that the first eight chapters build in a kind of crescendo, then the whole thing widens out with first the development of apes, then hominins, then humans and finally looks forward to the future. I use a musical term intentionally - this feels like a well-crafted piece of music, pushing us on to the big finish. The evolution of the nucleus allowed for a more organized system of reproduction. Bacterial cells generally reproduce by dividing in half to create two identical copies of the parent cell. Variation from the addition of extra genetic material is piecemeal and haphazard. Every time majority of flora and fauna gets wiped out (Five mass extinctions), life always reappeared and took a different direction in the evolutionary path. The story is the same with early life forms, or dinosaurs or proto mammals. The chapter about evolution of hominids is pretty interesting and made me realize how the human history is not even a chapter but a mere footnote in the grand book of life on earth. Daniel E. Lieberman, Edwin M. Lerner II professor of Biological Sciences, Harvard University and author of Exercised