地球上生命的（非常）简短的历史：12章讲完46亿年 英文原版 A (Very) Short History of Life On Earth : 4.6 Billion Years in 12 Chapters Henry Gee

基本信息

Format Paperback | 336 pages

Dimensions 130 x 197 x 20mm | 244g

Publication date 15 Sep 2022

Publisher Pan Macmillan

Imprint PICADOR

Language English

ISBN10 1529060583

ISBN13 9781529060584

页面参数仅供参考，具体以实物为准

书籍简介

几十亿年来，地球是一个不适宜居住的陌生地方——覆盖着翻腾的海洋，通过持续不断的火山爆发慢慢塑造着它的地貌，大气处于化学变化的持续状态。然而，尽管面临着几乎每一个可以想象到的生物可能遇到的挫折，生命已经灭绝，并重新开始进化。在接下来的几十亿年里，生命不断学习、适应和延续。它经受了火和冰的考验。粘液孕育了海绵，海绵经过数十亿年的复杂进化和适应，长出了脊梁，勇敢地面对无情海岸的未知世界，寻求海洋之外的生存。

从初次尝试到后来成为智人的早期原始人的传播，生命一直存在，毫不畏惧。《地球上生命的（非常）简短的历史》是一个关于生存和坚持的启发性故事，阐明了生命一直存在的微妙平衡，并持续到今天。这是你从未见过的我们的星球。

生命在亨利·吉的抒情散文中涌动——巨大的超级大陆漂移、碰撞、融合，形成了我们今天所知的地球面貌。生物被拟人化，从海洋中的“群居”细菌到三叠纪时期的恐龙对决，再到未来掌握在他们(新进化的)手中的宏伟哺乳动物。那些早已灭绝的、几乎是外星的早期生命形式在令人回味的细节中复活了。生命的进化步骤——从消化系统的发展到对飞行中的生物的敬畏——通过一种诱人的、近距离的亲密关系传达出来。

For billions of years, Earth was an inhospitably alien place - covered with churning seas, slowly crafting its landscape by way of incessant volcanic eruptions, the atmosphere in a constant state of chemical flux. And yet, despite facing literally every conceivable setback that living organisms could encounter, life has been extinguished and picked itself up to evolve again. Life has learned and adapted and continued through the billions of years that followed. It has weathered fire and ice. Slimes begat sponges, who through billions of years of complex evolution and adaptation grew a backbone, braved the unknown of pitiless shores, and sought an existence beyond the sea.

From that first foray to the spread of early hominids who later became Homo sapiens, life has persisted, undaunted. A (Very) Short History of Life is an enlightening story of survival, of persistence, illuminating the delicate balance within which life has always existed, and continues to exist today. It is our planet like you've never seen it before.

Life teems through Henry Gee's lyrical prose - colossal supercontinents drift, collide, and coalesce, fashioning the face of the planet as we know it today. Creatures are engagingly personified, from 'gregarious' bacteria populating the seas to duelling dinosaurs in the Triassic period to magnificent mammals with the future in their (newly evolved) grasp. Those long extinct, almost alien early life forms are resurrected in evocative detail. Life's evolutionary steps - from the development of a digestive system to the awe of creatures taking to the skies in flight - are conveyed with an alluring, up-close intimacy.

作者简介

亨利·吉博士出生于1962年。他在利兹大学和剑桥大学接受教育。三十多年来，他一直是国际科学杂志《自然》的作者和编辑。他之前的著作包括《偶然物种:人类进化的误解》；《过桥:了解脊椎动物的起源》；《时间深处：进化的革命——氏族学》；《雅各布之梯:人类基因组的历史》；《中土世界的科学》(与路易斯·v·雷伊合著)恐龙野外指南。他和家人以及许多宠物住在诺福克郡的克罗默。

Dr Henry Gee was born in 1962. He was educated at the universities of Leeds and Cambridge. For more than three decades he has been a writer and editor at the international science journal Nature. His previous books include The Accidental Species: Misunderstandings of Human Evolution; Across The Bridge: Understanding the Origin of the Vertebrates; Deep Time: Cladistics, the Revolution in Evolution; Jacob's Ladder: The History of the Human Genome; The Science of Middle-Earth, and (with Luis V. Rey) A Field Guide to Dinosaurs. He lives in Cromer, Norfolk, with his family and numerous pets.