A New History of Life

The Radical New Discoveries About the Origins and Evolution of Life on Earth

By: Peter Ward, Joe Kirschvink

Narrated by: William Elsman

Length: 14 hrs and 48 mins

Publisher's summary

Bloomsbury presents A New History of Life by Peter Ward & Joe Kirschvink, read by William Elsman.

The history of life on Earth is, in some form or another, known to us all—or so we think. A New History of Life offers a provocative new account, based on the latest scientific research, of how life on our planet evolved—the first major new synthesis for general listeners in two decades.

Charles Darwin’s theories, first published more than 150 years ago, still set the paradigm of how we understand the evolution of life—but scientific advances of recent decades have radically altered that understanding. In fact the currently accepted history of life on Earth is flawed and out of date. Now two pioneering scientists, one already an award-winning popular author, deliver an eye-opening narrative that synthesizes a generation’s worth of insights from new research.

Writing with zest, humor, and clarity, Ward and Kirschvink show that many of our long-held beliefs about the history of life are wrong. Three central themes emerge from the narrative. First, the development of life was not a stately, gradual process: Catastrophe, argue Ward and Kirschvink, shaped life’s history more than all other forces combined—from notorious events like the sudden extinction of dinosaurs to recently discovered ones like "Snowball Earth" and the "Great Oxygenation Event." One startling possibility: that life arrived on Earth from Mars. Second, life consists of carbon, but three other molecules have determined how it evolved: oxygen, carbon dioxide, and hydrogen sulfide are carbon’s silent partners. Third, ever since Darwin we have thought of evolution in terms of species. Yet it is the evolution of ecosystems—from deep-ocean vents to rainforests—that has formed the living world as we know it.

Drawing on their years of experience in paleontology, biology, chemistry, and astrobiology, Ward and Kirschvink tell a story of life on Earth that is at once too fabulous to imagine and too familiar to dismiss. And in a provocative coda, they assemble discoveries from the latest cutting-edge research to imagine how the history of life might unfold deep into the future.

©2015 Peter Ward and Joe Kirschvink (P)2022 Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

Paleoatmospheres reveal species success or failure

This book would does not lend itself to audio because you want to flip back and forth regarding some of the information or reread some of the complex chemistry. A retired paleontologist, I was interested in the new research, and have long driving distances, but the book format would have been better, in hindsight. Also, the narration was rather plodding and some words were mispronounced. I have some hard cover books by Peter Ward and the research by him and his colleagues is truly illuminating. Percentage of oxygen in the atmosphere appears to be a huge factor in species explosion or extinction. Not what we learned when I was in school! But when I was in school, continental drift was still just a theory. And birds were not related to dinosaurs. We keep learning! This book describes what we have learned about paleoatmosphere composition, in great detail. I wish it had described the actual tests to reach such conclusions. The book is so technical, only geeks will go for it. So give us the deets!