Life on a Young Planet
The First Three Billion Years of Evolution on Earth
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Narrated by:
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Eric Jason Martin
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By:
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Andrew H. Knoll
About this listen
Australopithecines, dinosaurs, trilobites - such fossils conjure up images of lost worlds filled with vanished organisms. But in the full history of life, ancient animals, even the trilobites, form only the half-billion-year tip of a nearly four-billion-year iceberg. Andrew Knoll explores the deep history of life from its origins on a young planet to the incredible Cambrian explosion, presenting a compelling new explanation for the emergence of biological novelty.
The very latest discoveries in paleontology - many of them made by the author and his students - are integrated with emerging insights from molecular biology and earth system science to forge a broad understanding of how the biological diversity that surrounds us came to be. Moving from Siberia to Namibia to the Bahamas, Knoll shows how life and environment have evolved together through Earth's history.
Listeners go into the field to confront fossils, enter the lab to discern the inner workings of cells, and alight on Mars to ask how our terrestrial experience can guide exploration for life beyond our planet. Along the way, Knoll brings us up-to-date on some of science's hottest questions, from the oldest fossils and claims of life beyond the Earth to the hypothesis of global glaciation and Knoll's own unifying concept of "permissive ecology."
PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.
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Ian Tattersall, a highly esteemed figure in the fields of anthropology, archaeology, and paleontology, leads a fascinating tour of the history of life and the evolution of human beings. Starting at the very beginning, Tattersall examines patterns of change in the biosphere over time, and the correlations of biological events with physical changes in the Earth's environment.
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great summary of where we are with understanding
- By david on 06-25-11
By: Ian Tattersall
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Creation
- How Science Is Reinventing Life Itself
- By: Adam Rutherford
- Narrated by: Walter Dixon
- Length: 6 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
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What is life? Humans have been asking this question for thousands of years. But as technology has advanced and our understanding of biology has deepened, the answer has evolved. For decades, scientists have been exploring the limits of nature by modifying and manipulating DNA, cells, and whole organisms to create new ones that could never have previously existed on their own.
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The Goldilocks book on what is life
- By Gary on 07-11-13
By: Adam Rutherford
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Why Evolution Is True
- By: Jerry A. Coyne
- Narrated by: Victor Bevine
- Length: 9 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
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Why evolution is more than just a theory: it is a fact. In all the current highly publicized debates about creationism and its descendant "intelligent design", there is an element of the controversy that is rarely mentioned: the evidence, the empirical truth of evolution by natural selection.
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As great as everyone says it is
- By Joseph on 12-01-10
By: Jerry A. Coyne
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Arrival of the Fittest
- Solving Evolution's Greatest Puzzle
- By: Andreas Wagner
- Narrated by: Sean Pratt
- Length: 8 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
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In Arrival of the Fittest, renowned evolutionary biologist Andreas Wagner draws on over 15 years of research to present the missing piece in Darwin's theory. Using experimental and computational technologies that were heretofore unimagined, he has found that adaptations are not just driven by chance, but by a set of laws that allow nature to discover new molecules and mechanisms in a fraction of the time that random variation would take.
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Robustness makes for an interesting life and book
- By Gary on 11-29-14
By: Andreas Wagner
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A Most Improbable Journey
- A Big History of Our Planet and Ourselves
- By: Walter Alvarez
- Narrated by: Adam Verner
- Length: 6 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
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Big History, the field that studies the entire known past of our universe to give context to human existence, has so far been the domain of historians. Geologist Walter Alvarez - best known for his Impact Theory explaining dinosaur extinction - makes a compelling case for a new, science-first approach to Big History.
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Learned so much
- By Niki on 12-09-18
By: Walter Alvarez
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How to Build a Dinosaur
- Extinction Doesn't Have to Be Forever
- By: Jack Horner, James Gorman
- Narrated by: Patrick Lawlor
- Length: 6 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
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In movies, in novels, in comic strips, and on television, we've all seen dinosaurs - or at least somebody's educated guess of what they would look like. But what if it were possible to build, or grow, a real dinosaur without finding ancient DNA? Jack Horner, the scientist who advised Steven Spielberg on the blockbuster film Jurassic Park and a pioneer in bringing paleontology into the 21st century, teams up with the editor of the New York Times's Science Times section to reveal exactly what's in store.
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Good book but misplaced title
- By Robert on 06-19-15
By: Jack Horner, and others
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When Humans Nearly Vanished
- The Catastrophic Explosion of the Toba Volcano
- By: Donald R. Prothero
- Narrated by: Qarie Marshall
- Length: 6 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
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Some 73,000 years ago, the Mount Toba supervolcano in toda's Indonesia erupted, releasing the energy of a million tons of explosives. So much ash and debris was injected into the stratosphere that it partially blocked the sun's radiation and caused global temperatures to drop for a decade. In this book, Donald R. Prothero presents the controversial argument that the Toba catastrophe nearly wiped out the human race, leaving only about a thousand to ten thousand breeding pairs of humans worldwide.
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A very special book
- By Scott Fitzsimmons on 02-02-19
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Exoplanets
- Diamond Worlds, Super Earths, Pulsar Planets, and the New Search for Life Beyond Our Solar System
- By: Michael Summers
- Narrated by: Jon Bennett
- Length: 5 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
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Since its 2009 launch, the Kepler satellite has discovered more than 2,000 exoplanets, or planets outside our solar system. More exoplanets are being discovered all the time, remarkable in their variety. Astronomer Michael Summers and physicist James Trefil explore these remarkable recent discoveries: planets revolving around pulsars, planets made of diamond, planets that are mostly water, and numerous rogue planets wandering through the emptiness of space.
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FINALLY, an Attention-Grabbing Planet Book!
- By aaron on 05-11-17
By: Michael Summers
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A Short History of Nearly Everything
- By: Bill Bryson
- Narrated by: Richard Matthews
- Length: 18 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
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Bill Bryson has been an enormously popular author both for his travel books and for his books on the English language. Now, this beloved comic genius turns his attention to science. Although he doesn't know anything about the subject (at first), he is eager to learn, and takes information that he gets from the world's leading experts and explains it to us in a way that makes it exciting and relevant.
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The Only Book I reread imediatley after reading
- By Andrew on 11-09-09
By: Bill Bryson
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Life on the Edge
- The Coming of Age of Quantum Biology
- By: Johnjoe McFadden, Jim Al-Khalili
- Narrated by: Pete Cross
- Length: 12 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
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Life is the most extraordinary phenomenon in the known universe; but how did it come to be? Even in an age of cloning and artificial biology, the remarkable truth remains: Nobody has ever made anything living entirely out of dead material. Life remains the only way to make life. Are we still missing a vital ingredient in its creation?
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More woo than new
- By Gary on 09-09-15
By: Johnjoe McFadden, and others
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The World Before Us
- The New Science Behind Our Human Origins
- By: Tom Higham
- Narrated by: John Sackville
- Length: 9 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
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A fascinating investigation of the origin of humans based on incredible new discoveries and advanced scientific technology.
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Wonderfully Accessible
- By Deborah N on 11-02-21
By: Tom Higham
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Great overview of advances in dinosaur paleo
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Makes minerals interesting
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Paleoatmospheres reveal species success or failure
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Very chilling and well thought out
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poorly written overview of evolutionary biology
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Random Geology Verbose History Jumbled Tours
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A Story About Pretty Much Everything
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Mammals are immersed in minutia.
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Wonderful, thought provoking !
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it is actual proof
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Geology
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In this Very Short Introduction audiobook, Jan Zalasiewicz gives a brief introduction to the fascinating field of geology. Describing how the science developed from its early beginnings, he looks at some of the key discoveries that have transformed it before delving into its various subfields, such as sedimentology, tectonics, and stratigraphy.
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Geology and climate change
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What listeners say about Life on a Young Planet
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Malcolm Snelgrove
- 09-28-22
Voice acting is fine
Voice acting is fine, but it may annoy some. I found it was clear and good to fall asleep to in any case! Subject dealt with well with an insight to the field and fieldwork, not just facts and discoveries.
I will be listening to this book again.
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- nwrob
- 11-03-22
Interesting, broad and well written
Very crisply written account of the early earth and biosphere. The author is an authority in the field of biogeochemistry, which gives this material a pov distinct from most popular books on the subject I've read. I liked it enough I will get it in print. My only caveat is the narration is tinged by an affected and overdone staccato conciseness that takes some effort, for me at least, to process. It gets between the listener and the fascinating and well written material, which is a bit of a pity. Still, very much worth the time and the credit, if you're into the subject matter at all.
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1 person found this helpful
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- Arden
- 02-16-20
The Earliest Life
I enjoyed this book about the very first life on earth. I wanted to learn about the single-celled organisms that were the life-forms that populated the earth for billions of years, and this book presented that information in a way I could understand.
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14 people found this helpful
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- Anonymous User
- 09-04-21
bad narration
a b c d e f . . . . . . . .
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1 person found this helpful
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- Keith
- 09-25-24
Skip the epilog.
A great book that explains the early Earth. But why do authors writing about science always seem to be obligated to go off on some anti-religion rant, only to end with their own prayers to their god of scientism?
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- Anonymous User
- 11-25-24
Narration is a little slow but great book.
I had to put the speed at 1.2 in order to pay attention. I get that it’s a dense topic but slowing everything down so much can be distracting. It’s still a fascinating topic and well written enough. The early chapters take a couple listens to fully absorb the material but are written well enough to feel more like a conversation than a textbook, which is exactly what you want. Great book, might even get a physical copy at some point.
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- Roger March
- 06-02-21
A bit mixed ...
The content is good, the narration annoying. I really liked the depth into life before the Cambrian.
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2 people found this helpful
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- Bartek
- 02-02-23
Life during the Precambrian period
One of the very few Audible books on the earliest life on Earth, very interesting - though quite demanding: the reader has to focus to follow the story. Pretty revealing, I learned a lot. Mind you that the book was written in 2000s, so I just wonder what new fascinating discoveries were made in the last 15 years.
On the other hand, you need to get used *sigh* to the narrator *sigh*, who has a bit irritating tendency *sigh* to finish every phrase with a sigh *sigh*.
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1 person found this helpful
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Dense subject matter
Narration is clear but stuffy, not at all engaging.
Material focuses entirely on microorganisms and is dry.
Perhaps of interest to specialists, but will bore laypersons to death.
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- Richard D. Bradley
- 02-17-22
Enunciation perfected
The reader clearly adores the sound of his own voice. It becomes outright pretentious at times, when he adds extra syllables, like clumsy grace notes in a musical composition. I read it on Kindle after giving up on the Audible version.
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