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The History of Life

By: Michael J. Benton
Narrated by: Peter Larkin
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Publisher's Summary

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, that obliterated 90 percent 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 five 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.

©2008 Michael J. Benton (P)2021 Tantor

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In the spirit of reconciliation, Audible acknowledges the Traditional Custodians of country throughout Australia and their connections to land, sea and community. We pay our respect to their elders past and present and extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples today.