Life: A Natural History of the First Four Billion Years of Life on Earth

369 Pages·1999·4.25 MB·English

by  Richard Fortey

Acclaim for Richard Fortey’s
Life
“An eclectic waltz among organisms at once extraordinary and extinct.… No one can finish
Life without having accrued considerable knowledge of evolutionary history and a sense of
excitement of discovery that can be conveyed only by a professional scientist chipping away at
the rock face of his discipline.”
—The New York Times Book Review
“[Fortey’s] prose, like Darwin’s, is spare, confident, and unadorned. As his impressive
synthesis of evolution unfolds, a distant world is brought to life.”
—The Economist
“The personal elements are crucial to the story, for Fortey—a senior paleontologist in
London’s Natural History Museum— has been at the center of paleontological research for
more than two decades.… A wonderful blend of science and anecdote.”
—Natural History
“A true history of the world.… A humbling narrative, written with a powerful impact.… A
tour de force.”
—St. Louis Post-Dispatch
“A celebration of learning, a spellbinding look into prehistoric landscapes and a captivating
piece of literature.”
—The Columbus Dispatch
“Fascinating.… Describes the climb up the evolutionary ladder with scientific accuracy and an
urbane literary style.”
—Parade
“Life is an astonishing performance, the gathering of an immense store of knowledge and
experience by a single individual and bearing his personal stamp.”
—The Kansas City Star
“The scope of the book is immense.… It takes the reader into the heart of the evolutionary
process.”
—The Raleigh News & Observer
“Fortey’s contribution is unique.… He makes very clear how the biological world evolved in
harmony with changing geological and climatic conditions.”
—San Francisco Examiner
“A hypnotic tale of what may have happened 3.8 billion years ago.”
—Outside
“The author has magically transposed and integrated his academic biography and intellectual
growth into the natural history of life.… Fortey lyrically raises fossils from the dead.”
—Nature
Richard Fortey
Life
Richard Fortey is a senior paleontologist at the Natural History
Museum in London. He is the author of several books, including
Fossils: A Key to the Past and The Hidden Landscape, which was
named the Natural World Book of the Year in 1993. In 1997 he was
elected a Fellow of the Royal Society.
Also by Richard Fortey
FOSSILS: A KEY TO THE PAST
THE HIDDEN LANDSCAPE

For Jackie, with my love
Contents
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgements
1 The Everlasting Sea
2 Dust to Life
3 Cells, Tissues, Bodies
4 My Animals and Other Families
5 Marine Riches
6 Landwards
7 Silent Forests, Crowded Oceans
8 The Great Continent
9 Monstrous and Modest
10 Theories of the End
11 Suckling Success
12 Humanity
13 Wheels of Chance
Glossary
Suggestions for Further Reading
Illustrations
1. Spitsbergen
2. Ny Alesund
3. Pitching tent in the far north
4. Rock section along the bleak shore
5. Sanitary arrangements in the Arctic
6. Laundry in the Arctic
7. Trilobite
8. Archaea (reproduced courtesy of the Institute of Biochemistry, Genetics and Microbiology,
University of Regensburg)
9. Hot muds in a sulphurous spring near Mount St. Helens (photo © Robert Francis)
10. “Black smoker” (photo © Ralph White/Corbis)
11. Stromatolites (photo M. K. Howarth)
12. Precambrian fossils preserved in cherts (photo Bill Schopf)
13. Ancient Precambrian stromatolites
14. Acritarchs
15. Slime mould Fuligo septica (photo © Heather Angel)
16. Cavalcade of protists; a) Diplotheca; b) Giardia; c) dinoflagellate (all courtesy of Martin
Embley and Sandy Knapp); d) amoeba (photo © Astrid & Hanns-Frieder Michler/Science
Photo Library); e) paramecium showing its cilia (photo © Michael Abbey Science Photo
Library)
17. Living primitive jellyfish
18. Dickinsonia
19. Spriggina
20. Skeletal fossils of animals from the early Cambrian (photos Stefan Bengtson)
21. Radiolarians
22. Burgess Shale arthropods
23. Trilobite with sophisticated eye
24. Reefs—ancient and modern
25. Conodonts
26. Professor Lindström’s reconstruction and the real conodont reconstructed by Mark Purnell
27. Graptolites “writing in the rocks”
28. Charles Lapworth
29. Tree ferns in New Zealand (photo © John Mead/Science Photo Library)
30. The Feathers, Ludlow (photo reproduced courtesy of Regal Hotel Group plc)
31. Thin section through Devonian Rhynie Chert
32. Willi Hennig (© Springer-Verlag 1977)
33. Trigonotarbid—an early and distant relative of the spiders reconstructed by Jason Dunlop
34. Part of the skeleton of “Boris” from the late Devonian of Greenland (photo courtesy of
Jenny Clack)
35. Jawless fish Spizbergaspis
36. Spiny trilobite Ceratarges
37. Bark of the Carboniferous tree Lepidodendron
38. Ornamental column from the Natural History Museum, London
39. Living Selaginella
40. Carboniferous cockroach Aphthoroblattina johnsoni
41. “Bolsover dragonfly” (photo © The Natural History Museum, London)
42. Carboniferous shark Stethacantbus (photo reproduced courtesy of the Hunterian Museum,
University of Glasgow)
43. Fossil shark teeth
44. Alfred Wegener’s reconstruction of the continents at the time of Pangaea (from The Origin
of Continents and Oceans by Alfred Wegener, 1924; photo © The Natural History Museum,
London)
45. Giant single-celled foraminiferans—fusulines—in thin section
46. Glossopteris
47. Fern frond unrolling
48. John Martin’s illustration for Hawkins’s Book of the Great Sea Dragons, 1840 (photo ©
The Natural History Museum, London)
49. Old, droopy-tailed Diplodocus
50. Diplodocus with its tail lifted
51. Reconstruction of Brachiosaurus in aquatic habitat by Zdenek Burian (reproduced
courtesy of the artist’s estate)
52. Modern version of sauropod habits (photo © The Ronald Grant Archive)
53. Jurassic sea lily (photo C. P. Palmer)
54. Two Cretaceous fossil sea urchins
55. Jurassic ammonite
56. Living coccolithophorid Emiliania
57. Cretaceous chalk seen through an electron microscope
58. Fossil insect Simulium
59. Charles Darwin (photo © Maull & Fox/Mary Evans Picture Library)
60. Down House, Kent