Review by Choice Review
Fresh views on the old but pervasive questions of where, when, and how life appeared on earth mark this valuable compendium of 43 succinct chapters by an international group of experts. Most emphasize new technologies applied to structures in ancient rocks to help understand diversity and complexity of organisms and environments of the distant past. The authors generally succeed admirably by reexamining old assumptions and documenting, interpreting, and relating new specific evidence in an environmental context. The volume is organized chronologically in three nearly equal sections. "Life's Gestation and Infancy" covers the origin of life 0.5-1 billion years after the earth formed to the beginning of the Proterozoic era, when the only living organisms were minute bacteria and their prokaryotic relatives. "The Maturation of Earth and Life" considers the origin and early diversification over the next 2 billion years of the unicellular protistans with cell nuclei and other organelles. "Multicellularity and the Phanerozoic Revolution" emphasizes the diversification of multicellular organisms over a geologically short interval at the beginning of the Paleozoic era about 550 million years ago. Upper-division undergraduate through professional. A. J. Kohn; University of Washington
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Choice Review
