Description: 1 In the Abyss of Time.- 1 In the beginning.- The earliest Earth.- The water crisis.- A planet fit for life.- The constitution of the solid Earth; plate tectonics.- The importance of water.- Further reading.- 2 The beginning of life.- What is life'.- The making of life.- The chicken or the egg'.- The birthplace of life: Darwin's 'if'.- The hydrothermal possibility.- Other ideas.- An opinion.- Further reading.- 3 The Archaean planet.- The beginning of the geological record.- Examples from the geological record: the nature of the evidence.- The physical environment.- Further reading.- 2 The Occupation of the Planet.- 4 The variety of life.- Discovering life's history: stasis or change'.- The interdependence of life.- The Gaia hypothesis.- Further reading.- 5 Life in the Archaean.- The early record of life.- The doings of Archaean life: the creation of the biosphere.- Building an ecosystem.- Further reading.- 6 The surface of the Proterozoic Earth.- The middle age.- Building the continents.- The sedimentary basins of the late Archaean and Proterozoic.- Proterozoic igneous activity.- The Proterozoic world.- Further reading.- 7 The birth of the eukaryotes.- Proterozoic life.- The ancestry of the eukaryotes.- Reproduction and death.- The early eukaryotes.- Themetazoa.- The end of the Proterozoic: the Ediacarian record.- The environment at the end of the Proterozoic.- Further reading.- 3 The Spread of the Eukaryotes.- 8 The early Palaeozoic explosion and its aftermath.- The survival of the fittest.- The Burgess shale: life in the Cambrian Sea.- More diversification.- Fishes and plants.- Further reading.- 9 The changing land.- The dance of the continents.- The mechanism of continental drift.- The arrival of the land animals.- Eggs.- The early reptiles.- Food.- Further reading.- 10 The rule of the reptiles.- The reign of the archosaurs.- The Saurischia.- The Ornithischia.- The domestic economy of the dinosaurs.- Flying reptiles -- pterosaurs and birds.- Painting the land: the arrival of colour.- The dinosaurs, science and dinner.- The late Cretaceous disaster.- Further reading.- 4 The Modern World.- 11 The new world.- A world in turmoil.- The split of the continents.- The changing climate.- The carbon budget.- The spread of the mammals.- The explosion of the placentals.- The C3 and C4 plants.- The birds.- Further reading.- 12 Humanity.- The evolution of the primates.- The early humans.- Homo sapiens.- The ice ages.- Further reading.- 13 Inhabiting an island.- Conquering the Earth.- The rats at work.- The management of our Earth.- Further reading.

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