| Reviews |
| - 'My favourite non-fiction book this year...[a] highly readable history of the last half-billion years on earth' - Oliver Sacks, Observer Books of the Year
- 'David Beerling tells two stories in parallel. Both are eloquently and engagingly merged in a scholarly, yet generally accessible book...Beerling provides for the reader a fascinating history of the discovery of fossils and the inferences drawn from them...this book is a wonderful example of the nascent field of Earth systems science.' - Paul Falkowski, Nature
- '...of great value and relevance to all interested in plants, climate and, equally, the future of our 'emerald planet'.' - John MacLeod, RHS Professor of Horticulture, Garden
- 'David Beerling's fascinating new book offers a new global perspective on the evolution of our planet...[a] vivid account...The environmental legacy of the plant kingdom upon our world can only be better appreciated after reading this book.' - Louis Ronse De Craene
- 'A beautifully detailed account...a gorgeous book.' - Steven Poole, The Guardian (Review)
- '[A] fascinating overview of green evolution.' - Karl Dallas, Morning Star
- 'Within these pages is one of the greatest stories ever told ... It is as fascinating as it is important.' - New Scientist
- 'The Emerald Planet is a serious talking-to about why plants must not be ignored.' - Jonathan Silvertown, TLS
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| Description | | - A wonderful, interdisciplinary approach examining the role of plants in Earth's history, encompassing evolution, climate change, botany, palaeontology, and history of science.
- Reveals the extraordinary amount that plants can tell us about the history of the planet -- something that has often been overlooked amongst the preoccuputations with dinosaur bones and animal fossils.
- Provides a fascinating perspective on the controversial and crucial subject of global warming - for we can only fully understand climate change today by looking into the distant past, long before the rise of mankind.
- Incorporates cutting-edge research.
- Explains current science in an accessible and entertaining way.
| Plants have transformed our planet over the last 470 million years as they invaded the land and diversified into the astonishing variety we know today. But their influence has reached even further: they have profoundly moulded the Earth's climate and the evolutionary trajectory of life. Far from being 'silent witnesses to the passage of time', plants are dynamic components of our world, shaping
the environment throughout history as much as that environment has shaped them.
In The Emerald Planet, David Beerling puts plants centre stage, revealing the crucial role they have played in driving global changes in the environment, in recording hidden facets of Earth's history, and in helping us to predict its future. His account draws together evidence from fossil plants, from
experiments with their living counterparts, and from computer models of the 'Earth System', to illuminate the history of our planet and its biodiversity. This new approach reveals how plummeting carbon dioxide levels removed a barrier to the evolution of the leaf; how forests once grew on Antarctica, how plants played a starring role in allowing spectacular giant insects to thrive in the
Carboniferous; and strengthens fascinating and contentious fossil evidence for an ancient hole in the ozone layer. Along the way, Beerling introduces a lively cast of pioneering scientists from Victorian times onwards whose discoveries provided the crucial background to these and the other puzzles.
This new understanding of our planet's past sheds a sobering light on our own climate-changing
activities, and offers clues to what our climatic and ecological futures might look like. There could be no more important time to take a close look at plants, and to understand the history of the world through the stories they tell. |
Readership: Readers of popular science with an interest in the history of Earth, in botany, and palaeontology. Undergraduate and graduate students in those subject areas. Also, those seeking an interesting different perspective on climate change and global warming.
| Contents |
Preface
Introduction
1.
Why did plants evolve leaves?
2.
Why did giant insects once rule the world?
3.
Leaves, genes and greenhouse gases
4.
Oxygen and the lost world of giants
5.
Catastrophic climatic change ushers in the dinosaur era
6.
Flourishing Antarctic forests
7.
What caused global warming fifty million years before mankind?
8.
Nature's green revolution and the switch to a flammable planet
Epilogue
Glossary
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| Authors, editors,
and contributors |
David Beerling, Professor of Paleoclimatology, University of Sheffield
|
The specification in this catalogue, including without
limitation price, format, extent, number of illustrations,
and month of publication, was as accurate as
possible at the time the catalogue was compiled.
Occasionally, due to the nature of some contractual restrictions, we
are unable to ship a specific product to a particular territory.
Jacket images are provisional and liable to change before publication.
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