Life

This book is a history of life on Earth written by a palaeontologist, moving from the earliest microbial worlds through the appearance of animals, the colonisation of land, and the rise of vertebrates, plants, and eventually humans. Fortey uses fossils, living analogues, and particular sites - among them the Burgess Shale and other classic deposits - to show how body plans, extinctions, and environments changed. Typical subjects include trilobites, the leap onto land, dinosaurs, and the mammals that followed. The argument is evolutionary and geological rather than a biography of any one species. It is a narrative of deep time for the general reader, not a textbook of systematics.

Bound in green cloth blocked with a coloured design. Orange slipcase printed on front with a drawing. Presentation volume for 2009.