A Brief History of Earth: Four Billion Years in Eight Chapters

by Andrew H. Knoll

among the enduring lessons of geology is a recognition of how fleeting, fragile, and precious our present moment is.

“In the end,” he said, “we will conserve only what we love, we will love only what we understand, and we will understand only what we are taught.”

Earth’s environmental constancy, then, is maintained dynamically, through a balance between uplift and erosion.

over billions of years, Earth’s first simple organisms have given rise to a staggering diversity of species, including one with the audacity to ask how we got here. Life, then, is characterized by growth and reproduction, metabolism, and evolution.

as organic carbon buried is organic carbon not respired using oxygen, enhanced organic burial should have increased O2 levels in the atmosphere.