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

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In the tradition of Richard Dawkins, Bill Bryson, and Simon Winchester—An entertaining and uniquely informed narration of Life's life story. In A (Very) Short History of Life on Earth, Henry Gee zips through the last 4.6 billion years with infectious enthusiasm and intellectual rigor. Drawing on the very latest scientific understanding and writing in a clear, accessible style, he tells an enlightening tale of survival and persistence that illuminates the delicate balance within which life has always existed. To the earliest life, which had evolved in an ocean and beneath an atmosphere essentially without free oxygen, it spelled environmental catastrophe. To set the matter into perspective, however, when cyanobacteria were making their first essays into oxygenic photosynthesis—3 billion years ago or more—there was rarely enough free oxygen at any time to count as more than a minor trace pollutant. But oxygen is so potent a force that even a trace spelled disaster to life that had evolved in its absence. These whiffs of oxygen caused the first of many mass extinctions in the Earth’s history, as generation upon generation of living things were burned alive. The signs are already there for those willing to see them. When the habitat becomes degraded such that there are fewer resources to go around; when fertility starts to decline; when the birth rate sinks below the death rate; and when genetic resources are limited—the only way is down. The question is “How fast?” From that first foray to the spread of early hominids who later became Homo sapiens, life has persisted, undaunted. A (Very) Short History of Life is an enlightening story of survival, of persistence, illuminating the delicate balance within which life has always existed, and continues to exist today. It is our planet like you’ve never seen it before.

Some even experimented with multicellular life, such as the 1,200-million-year-old seaweed Bangiomorpha26 and the approximately 900-million-year-old fungus Ourasphaira.27 But there were stranger things. The earliest known signs of multicellular life are 2,100 million years old. Some of these creatures are as large as twelve centimeters across, so hardly microscopic, but they are so strange in form to our modern eyes that their relationship with algae, fungi, or other organisms is obscure.28 They could have been some form of colonial bacteria, but we cannot discount the possibility that there once lived entire categories of living organisms—bacterial, eukaryote, or something entirely other—that died out without leaving any descendants and that we should therefore find hard to comprehend. 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.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. Of course, this is pure speculation. There is no evidence to support Dr Gee’s argument as anything other than especially interesting science fiction, but this idea is something I’ve heard before. (It is unfortunate that Dr Gee did not clearly state somewhere in the text of his book nor in this last chapter, as he does in his Endnotes, that “I am telling this tale more as a story than as a scientific exercise, some of the things I’ll say have more evidential support than others.”) 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.

With authority, humor, and detail, Gee, a paleontologist and senior editor of Nature, traces the progression of life on earth from its initial stirrings...readers will find this eye-opening book compelling for years to come." In "A (Very) Short History of Life on Earth", Henry Gee has indeed provided the reader with a short, but broad, introduction to the history of the past "4.6 Billion Years in 12 Pithy Chapters". The chapters are fairly short, very interesting and have the occasional amusing observation. Nothing to snooze at in this book. Some of the commentary in the endnotes (which really should have been footnotes!) are also fairly entertaining and informative. The only unfortunate omission is the inclusion of some sketches or illustrations to show the reader what some of the fascinating creatures might have looked like. I enjoyed reading this book a great deal, and I particularly like Henry Gee's writing style. Under a microscope, bacterial cells appear simple and featureless. This simplicity is deceptive. In terms of their habits and habitats, bacteria are highly adaptable. They can live almost anywhere. The number of bacterial cells in (and on) a human body is very much greater than the number of human cells in that same body. Despite the fact that some bacteria cause serious disease, we could not survive without the help of the bacteria that live in our guts and enable us to digest our food. I can honestly say this book terrified me yet gave me hope at the same time. I know you're probably thinking, really? It's a book about the history of the earth, what exactly are you terrified about? Well, for one, it's truly astounding just how many times the earth has nearly wiped out all life in its existence.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. Speculating on the future of life on Earth, Dr Gee proposes an interesting idea for how all life may eventually go extinct on this planet. Even as individuals age and eventually die, so too, do species and indeed, even entire planets. On one hand, predicting the future is not possible, but the overall familiarity of Dr Gee’s idea of the universality of aging makes it understandable and weirdly satisfying. In Dr Gee’s view, watching all life wink out may be like watching a film run in reverse, where complexity declines, and the ability to evolve into new species diminishes until there’s nothing left alive as even the planet itself dies. The most insidious threat to humankind is something called “ extinction debt.” There comes a time in the progress of any species, even ones that seem to be thriving, when extinction will be inevitable, no matter what they might do to avert it. The cause of extinction is usually a delayed reaction to habitat loss. The species most at risk are those that dominate particular habitat patches at the expense of others, who tend to migrate elsewhere, and are therefore spread more thinly. Humans occupy more or less the whole planet, and with our sequestration of a large wedge of the productivity of this planetwide habitat patch, we are dominant within it. H. sapiens might therefore already be a dead species walking.

A]n exuberant romp through evolution, like a modern-day Willy Wonka of genetic space. Gee’s grand tour enthusiastically details the narrative underlying life’s erratic and often whimsical exploration of biological form and function.”—Adrian Woolfson, The Washington Post Steve Brusatte, paleontologist, University of Edinburgh and New York Times bestselling author of The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs With dramatic flair, Henry Gee’s sweeping new book, A (Very) Short History of Life on Earth, tells the 4-billion-year story of life on this planet and how it has been repeatedly shaped by geological, climatic, and atmospheric forces. Trained as a paleontologist, Gee tells life’s history using the framework of the fossil record, offering insights from the related fields of ecology and physiology. Interwoven as it is with geology and climate, life evolves the way Ernest Hemingway said we go broke: “gradually and then suddenly” (1).The first rumbles of an oncoming storm came from the rifting and breakup of a supercontinent, Rodinia. This included every significant landmass at the time.29 One consequence of the breakup was a series of ice ages that covered the entire globe, the like of which had not been seen since the Great Oxidation Event. But life responded once again by rising to the challenge. Terrifying. As described on the cover, this is a very concise history of the forming of the Earth and the various ages it went through; including the evolution of life and the creatures we now know today (don't worry, the dinosaurs are in here too). The book was over before I knew it, but I can still say I learned way more than I knew before; in a very easy to understand way. Gee is talented when it comes to breaking down the science into general terms. 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.’ From that first foray to the spread of early hominids who later became Homo sapiens, life has persisted, undaunted. A (Very) Short History of Life: 4.6 Billion Years in 12 Chapters is an enlightening story of survival, of persistence, illuminating the delicate balance within which life has always existed, and continues to exist today. It is our planet like you've never seen it before. A (Very) Short History of Life on Earth: 4.6 Billion Years in 12 Pithy Chapters, by Henry Gee, is an interesting little book on the history of life on Earth. Of course, a small book such as this will not, in any way, exhaustively cover any of the topics or lifeforms contained within. It does, however, give a very approachable overview of the subject, and with an extensive source list, and further reading list within, it also gives the reader next steps if they wish to drill down on any one topic. This book examines life as we know it so far, from its earliest theorized state, with cells beginning to cooperate and form more complex structures, to the advent of single cell, and multicellular life, and its slow evolution into more complex and specialized forms. The pursuit of nutrients, and the need to survive both the harsh radiation from the sun, and the changing climate of the Earth, led to numerous innovations for protection, efficient use and storage of energy, and reproduction, amongst other needs. Gee has captivated my attention with this book, giving brief tidbits of information on life from the earliest points in their history, up to the present day.