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New Scientist: The Collection
New Scientist: The Collection, Vol. 3.2: Origin, Evolution, Extinction
How did life begin? This is one of the great eternal questions. All cultures have a creation story, but modern science has the best one of all – a near-complete account of how our planet went from a barren lump of rock to one covered in a rich diversity of plants, animals and microbes.
This issue of New Scientist: The Collection takes you on a journey through life’s origins and the watershed moments in its history. From spectacular fossils to evolutionary theory, it tells the epic story of the only living planet we know of in the Universe.
And where there’s life, there’s death. The fossil record reveals that most species that existed have gone extinct. Why? And what would happen to the planet if all life suddenly died? Prepare to go on a journey of a lifetime.
This issue of New Scientist: The Collection takes you on a journey through life’s origins and the watershed moments in its history. From spectacular fossils to evolutionary theory, it tells the epic story of the only living planet we know of in the Universe.
And where there’s life, there’s death. The fossil record reveals that most species that existed have gone extinct. Why? And what would happen to the planet if all life suddenly died? Prepare to go on a journey of a lifetime.
- GenresScience
265 pages, Kindle Edition
Published April 26, 2016
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
December 28, 2022
This issue takes you on a fascinating journey of discovering your and everyone else's moment of birth. You learn about LUCA, i.e. our last universal common ancestor which lived 4 billions years ago, and the first anoxygenic and oxygenic photosyntheses. Single-cell organisms evolved into multicellular living things about 750 million years ago. That's when it got really interesting.
NewScientist show you pictures of the most amazing fossils of animals caught fighting, brooding eggs, mating or giving birth.
It presents the Gaia hypothesis scientists wish to be valid only to deliver a harsh verdict that our planet is more fragile than Gaia implies.
The issue also debunks a few popular myths about natural selection and warns us against political leaders preferring dogma to biological reality. Having illustrated the massive scale of all previous extinctions, it explains the human-caused impact, dubbed as 'unnatural selection', resulting in the current mass extinction.
The final pages are dedicated to our quite probable fate, that is, the state of Earth when all living beings are eradicated and our planet becomes completely sterile uninhabitable, which shall be about 1 billion years from now.
The more I read the NewScientist Collection, the more I want to know about all aspects of life.
NewScientist show you pictures of the most amazing fossils of animals caught fighting, brooding eggs, mating or giving birth.
It presents the Gaia hypothesis scientists wish to be valid only to deliver a harsh verdict that our planet is more fragile than Gaia implies.
The issue also debunks a few popular myths about natural selection and warns us against political leaders preferring dogma to biological reality. Having illustrated the massive scale of all previous extinctions, it explains the human-caused impact, dubbed as 'unnatural selection', resulting in the current mass extinction.
The final pages are dedicated to our quite probable fate, that is, the state of Earth when all living beings are eradicated and our planet becomes completely sterile uninhabitable, which shall be about 1 billion years from now.
The more I read the NewScientist Collection, the more I want to know about all aspects of life.
February 6, 2025
Excellent read
July 22, 2016
Read while on holiday. I found the first section quite hard going as I have little background knowledge of genetics, but the rest of the articles were very readable based on layman's knowledge of the subjects in hand. The section on "Gaia" felt like a bit of a filler - not sure it really fits in with the other sections - if you explore that why not explore creationism a little more?
Overall I enjoyed the approach and picked up a lot of new info along the way. I'll be summarising this one for my own records later and I will be getting more from the series.
Overall I enjoyed the approach and picked up a lot of new info along the way. I'll be summarising this one for my own records later and I will be getting more from the series.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews