Life on a Young Planet: The First Three Billion Years of Evolution on Earth (Princeton Science Library) [Paperback]

Andrew H. Knoll (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 30, 2004 | ISBN-10: 0691120293 | ISBN-13: 978-0691120294

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. Innovations in biology have helped shape our air and oceans, and, just as surely, environmental change has influenced the course of evolution, repeatedly closing off opportunities for some species while opening avenues for others.

Readers 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.''

In laying bare Earth's deepest biological roots, Life on a Young Planet helps us understand our own place in the universe--and our responsibility as stewards of a world four billion years in the making.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Knoll, a paleontologist at Harvard, has spent most of his life examining and making sense of microscopic Precambrian fossils from around the world. In a book so well written that nonspecialists and specialists alike will find much to savor, he captures both the excitement of scientific discovery and the intricacies of scientific interpretation. He addresses two of the biggest questions of biology and paleontology-how did life begin and why was there an explosion of life forms at the start of the Cambrian Era. His evenhanded explanations draw heavily from the work he, his graduate students and his collaborators from around the world have performed. Unlike other recent offerings (e.g., Snowball Earth by Gabrielle Walker and In the Blink of an Eye by Andrew Parker), Knoll is not uncomfortable with taking a middle ground, claiming that conclusive answers are not yet within our grasp. He constructs a case for the importance of "permissive ecology," a situation in which "life and environment evolved together, each influencing the other in building the biosphere we inhabit today." Recognizing that his view is neither as flashy nor as controversial as others, he says, "The absence of a definitive punch line may disappoint some readers, but as a paleontologist, it is why I get up in the morning. For scientists, unanswered questions are like Everest unclimbed, an irresistible lure for restless minds." Readers interested in substance will certainly not be disappointed. 33 color illus., 25 b&w photos, 47 line illus. FYI: Knoll has been chosen by CNN and Time magazine as "America's Best" paleontologist.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Review

In a book so well written that nonspecialists and specialists alike will find much to savor, [Knoll] captures both the excitement of scientific discovery and the intricacies of scientific interpretation. . . . Readers interested in substance will certainly not be disappointed. -- Publishers Weekly

Knoll is well placed to tell this amazing story, and he does so with verve. -- Douglas Palmer, New Scientist

Andrew Knoll is an ideal guide through this early phase of life's history on the Earth. . . . [O]ne of the strengths of Knoll's book is that it presents science as the open-ended endeavor that it is.... Life on a Young Planet . .. expresses better than most the bumptious vitality and sheer fun of open-minded research. -- Stefan Bengtson, Nature

A fascinating book. . . . The catastrophic surface narrative of this impressive and intriguing book would surely have pleased Stephen Jay Gould; but I think its deterministic subtext would have pleased Charles Darwin still more. -- Matt Cartmill, Times Literary Supplement

Life on a Young Planet stands apart from it predecessors in two fundamental respects. First, Knoll is perhaps the most qualified person to write such an epic: a renaissance man whose text is filled with insightful quotes from authors ranging from Darwin to Dickins to Dyson. . . . Second . . . this book describes the coevolution of life on Earth as an integrated biochemical system that has profoundly and irrevocably changed over time. -- Guy M. Narbonne, Science

A balanced, excellent account of current theories and discussions of the origin and early evolution of life. . . . Knoll is able to convey difficult scientific issues with a minimum of jargon, using a brisk and witty prose. . . He is a gifted storyteller with a knack for choosing the right anecdote. . . . A browse through Knoll's book will enlighten both the cognoscenti and those unfamiliar with the complexities of reading a fossil record. . . . Knoll manages to present a multidisciplinary field in an interdisciplinary volume. -- Antonio Lazcano, American Scientist

The author weaves a beautifully written, fascinating story of life's origin and development based on his extensive field studies and research in the most remote corners of the globe. . . . This volume . . . is a most valuable asset that should be read by scientists active in the field, by teachers and students who are interested in the most recent thoughts on the subject, and, in fact, by anyone who is interested in how life might have originated and evolved on this planet or on other similar planets in our Universe. -- Nathan Dubowsky, Science Books & Films

This is not a textbook but rather a story, giving one person's view of how the jigsaw pieces fit together. It is written in flowing prose with many asides, personal anecdotes and explanations of what evidence there is and how it is used. . . . [F]or ecologists the book has much to offer in putting the early evolution of life into perspective. -- Bulletin of the British Ecological Society

[Knoll's] words have a poetic flavor and his deep interest in the study of life on earth flows out of them, carrying readers along whole maintaining a rigorous discourse. Knoll's book will appeal to anyone interested in the evolution of life on Earth. -- Choice

In this wonderful book . . . Knoll's extensive field experience and eagerness to share data and ideas with colleagues enable him to reconstruct responsibly the broad evolutionary scenario yet to remain close to the evidence. -- Lynn Margulis, Times Higher Education Supplement

A detective story to match the best crime fiction. It is told with verve. -- Paul Nettleton, The Guardian

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 304 pages
• Publisher: Princeton University Press (August 30, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0691120293
• ISBN-13: 978-0691120294
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.2 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (30 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #50,420 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

85 of 87 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An excellent book, but not an introductory book, October 8, 2003

By 

Stephen Holland (Greenbelt, Maryland United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Life on a Young Planet: The First Three Billion Years of Evolution on Earth (Princeton Science Library) (Hardcover)

Andrew Knoll's Life on a Young Planet is a fascinating attempt to describe the current state of our knowledge of how life evolved during the Earth's first three billion years. Most of the book deals with the period more than 543 million years ago. This period of Earth's history is not well understood, yet it saw the development of multicellular life and the start of the animal kingdom. Knoll's book is a balance account of the latest thinking on the division of life into domains, the rise of eukaryotic cells, the development of multicellular life, and the rise of plants and animals.

The book is balanced and avoids taking the route of sensationalism. A reader who is interested in biology and evolution can learn a lot from it. The book, however, does have two problems. First, it assumes that the reader is familiar with biology and genetics at the introductory University level. Readers with no previous knowledge will probably find themselves getting lost in the dense text. The second problem is that the book's ending is somewhat unsatisfactory. The author stops his discussion of the evolution of life at the Cambrian Explosion and ends the book with a chapter about what lessons that the early history of Earthly life teach about the prospects of life elsewhere in the Universe. This jump is jarring and leaves the reader feeling that the book is lacking a conclusion.

All in all I highly recommend this book to anyone who already knows the difference between eukaryotic and prokaryotic life. If, however, you need to do a Google search to understand that last sentence then this book may be a bit too advanced for you.

30 of 31 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Wide ranging., September 2, 2004

By 

algo41 "algo41" (philadelphia, pa United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Life on a Young Planet: The First Three Billion Years of Evolution on Earth (Princeton Science Library) (Hardcover)

Who knew? To be a paleontologist these days you need to know more than a little about biology, molecular biology, physics, chemistry, geology, plate tectonics, climatology, fossils of course - and be something of an adventurer. Knoll is also a fine writer - clear, interesting, capable of good descriptive prose. Truthfully, I am not all that interested in fossils, and I didn't get much from the color pictures, although others may. The quality of the writing got me through many of these sections. My reward was the many state of the art discussions, such as: the role of combined organisms in evolution: the genesis of the explosion of life forms which has occurred several times in earth's history; the origin of earth's current atmosphere (yes, that is important to reading the fossil clues). Knoll is great at identifying issues, explaining why some theories are no longer tenable, giving the arguments for the rest, and explaining his hunches. We all know that current levels of oxygen are due to photosynthesis, but it is not so simple, because if that were all there were to it, the earth would have had a high oxygen atmosphere hundreds of millions of years before it did. If you are interested in global warming, get this book, and just read the relevant chapters. Knoll cannot give background in all the subject areas, so he does not try for any. I would have been happier if I knew more about some of the bacteria he discusses, and an introductory chapter on what constitutes a fossil would have saved me some time (the material is there). However, if you know something about RNA/DNA, and have read at least one good article on plate tectonics, I think you will be OK.

20 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A fine balance, January 3, 2004

By 

Stephen A. Haines (Ottawa, Ontario Canada) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Life on a Young Planet: The First Three Billion Years of Evolution on Earth (Princeton Science Library) (Hardcover)

Knoll provides what may be the finest description of the sciences of early life available. Bringing together such fields as geology, biochemistry, genetics and, of course, his own science of paleontology, he presents a vivid image of how life formed long ago. The subtitle is deceptively simple. "First three billion years" rolls off the tongue easily. Knoll demonstrates the quest to understand how life originated has been elusive and arduous. The search, he reminds us constantly, is far from over. We may not even gain meaningful grasp of the subject if we restrict the inquiry to this planet.

Knoll asserts the benchmark for comprehending how life may have started was the Urey-Miller experiments of the 1950s. By assuming a particular composition of Earth's early atmosphere and bombarding that recipe with electricity to duplicate lightning, Urey and Miller produced amino acids. Knoll credits these experiments not with showing how life began, but by their stimulation of much further research. Since then, geologists have revealed increasingly older rocks. Instead of buried deep beneath the surface as might be expected, they are often found well exposed. Knoll's expeditions to chilly Siberian sites are offset by the roaring desert of outback Australia. Both locations have provided researchers with new information on composition, chemical and environmental processes, and, most significantly, Precambrian fossils.

The many research fields now involved in developing a picture of life's beginnings indicate how complex a task unveiling "simple" can be. Early life, of course, was microscopic. Sometimes it isn't fossils that are found, but spoor remains - tracks once left in mud, images of forms, and, most intriguing for many, chemical signatures. The chemical, is usually carbon, that fundamental element of life. But other elements, iron, sulfur and oxygen also carry messages about living processes.

Knoll manages a delicate arabesque as he presents us with the evidence obtained and the interpretations derived from it. He carefully delineates the fossil information given by the rocks, mixing it with geological and geochemical processes. Various researchers are given voice through his narrative. Where issues are contentious, and most ideas of early life fit that description, he explains the reasons behind the stance, then offers his own choice. While the conflict is rarely solved, none of his solutions are arbitrary or based on personality. You are still left to satisfy your own mind through his references. Knoll's prose presents this information and discussion with clarity and balance. At the end, with these lucid explanations as background, he considers that answers to many of our questions may be found on our nearest planetary neighbour - Mars.

Beyond the informative text provided, Knoll enhances the book with site photographs to convey the scale of the locations excavated. Ancient landscapes are today stark, and the photos do little to convey the nippy Kotuikan cliffs or the roasting Precambrian site of North Pole, Western Australia. A collection of plates offers stunning colour images of ancient fossils and some modern equivalents. He further diagrams phylogenetic trees showing the relationship of organisms and why they are considered related. Not all life, he reminds us, has followed the path to complexity. With a good, but not exhaustive, reading list to examine, the reader may continue the pursuit. The younger reader may even wish to further the knowledge we have. Knoll exhorts the next generation of early life researchers to examine the questions and go afield to provide more answers. There are few worthier causes. [stephen a. haines - Ottawa, Canada]