The history of life : a very short introduction
Record details
- ISBN: 9780199226320
- ISBN: 0199226326
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Physical Description:
print
170 pages : illustrations ; 18 cm. - Publisher: Great Clarendon Street, Oxford : Oxford University Press, 2008.
Content descriptions
General Note: | Includes index. |
Formatted Contents Note: | 1. Introduction -- 2. The origin of life -- 3. The origin of sex -- 4. The origin of skeletons -- 5. The origin of life on land -- 6. Forests and flight -- 7. The biggest mass extinction -- 8. The origin of modern ecosystems -- 9. The origin of humans. |
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Subject: | Life Origin |
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Available copies
- 1 of 1 copy available at Kirtland Community College.
Holds
- 0 current holds with 1 total copy.
Show Only Available Copies
Location | Call Number / Copy Notes | Barcode | Shelving Location | Status | Due Date |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Kirtland Community College Library | QH 325 .B46 2008 | 30775305533110 | General Collection | Available | - |
Electronic resources
The History of Life: a Very Short Introduction
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Summary
The History of Life: a Very Short Introduction
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, which obliterated 90% 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 5 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.