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

by Richard Fortey (Author) "SALTERELLA DODGED BETWEEN THE ICEBERGS..." (more)
Key Phrases: conodont animal, relative timescale, rock sections, Natural History Museum, South America, Burgess Shale (more...)
4.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (46 customer reviews)

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Customers buy this book with Earth: An Intimate History by Richard Fortey

Life: A Natural History of the First Four Billion Years of Life on Earth Earth: An Intimate History
Price For Both: $23.77

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Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com
"The excitement of discovery cannot be bought, or faked, or learned from books," London Natural History Museum senior paleontologist Richard Fortey writes in Life. The first chapter, an engrossing account of an Arctic fossil-hunting expedition he undertook as a university student, will bring shivers to anyone who has ever ignored cold hands, hunger, and filthy socks to keep looking for something new, some piece of rock or bit of plant that may hold the key to the gleaming certainty of understanding. Fortey's descriptions of scruffy field assistants and eccentrically brilliant scientists are easily as interesting as the billions of years of evolution he so imaginatively describes. After all, the fossil record has not been accepted without controversy, and the arguments among fallible evolutionary biologists as they refined their theories make for great reading. But it is the little animals that make up our distant ancestry that are the focus here. The often mysterious fossils they left beh