Prehistoric Past Revealed: The Four Billion Year History of Life on Earth [Paperback]

D Palmer (Author)

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Product details

Paperback: 176 pages
Publisher: University of California Press (12 Oct 2008)
Language English
ISBN-10: 0520248279
ISBN-13: 978-0520248274
Product Dimensions: 27.3 x 21.2 x 1.4 cm
Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 3,445,661 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Douglas Palmer

Product Description

Life on earth is now known to be an astonishing four billion years old. Yet as recently as two hundred years or so ago, much of world believed that all life was created in just six days. Over the past two centuries, the testimony of rocks has slowly revealed the Earth's deep prehistory and now scarcely a week passes without an important new discovery adding to our understanding of life's beginning and evolution. Written for a very wide audience, with an approachable text and many photographs and illustrations, "Prehistoric Past Revealed" tells the story of these discoveries. The book gives an overview history of life on Earth, including the most up-to-date research and discoveries from around the world, as it covers a wide range of fascinating topics - the fossil record, dinosaurs, extinction events, our earliest human ancestors, global environments, climate change - in a highly accessible format. Using timelines, diagrams, sidebar discussions, and breaking down complex ideas into digestible topics, Palmer shows how it has been possible to recover the story of life from the petrified remains of shells and bones scattered through rock strata. He takes us from the present day gradually back into the 'terra incognita' of the deep past with its extinct life forms, tracing human ancestry back by centering his discussion around internationally famous fossil sites. Each site reveals another episode in the history of life, as Palmer tells how the environment and life of the time have been reconstructed from its rocks and fossil remains. As it reveals the inner secrets of the Earth, "Prehistoric Past Revealed" also shows how these discoveries have irrevocably changed our worldview.

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Amazon.com: 2 reviews

0 of 1 people found the following review helpful

Suitable only as Laughter or as a Children's bedtime story 6 Feb 2012

By YumpinYoda - Published on Amazon.com

Format:Hardcover

This is just the kind of material that has dumbed down two generations of high school and college students. Written to about a fifth grade level and chock full of the usual liberal global warming rubbish and 'if only the humans had not interfered with nature', etc, etc, blah, blah.
A typical example in Chapter 2 is about the the end of the mammoths circa 2,800 BC and the author says....
"Seemingly blind to what they were doing, humans continued to decimate the survivors (mammoths) until today's impoverished fauna was 'achieved'."

Palmer maintains that the deluge, or Noah's flood, probably didn't happen (God help us, it couldn't have, because it says so in the Bible), but then goes on twice to say that numbers of mammoths are found dead in waterholes and he "assumes" that they all fell in trying to get a drink. I am still laughing through my tears.

Don't bother buying this rubbish unless you want to regress to Neanderthal.

8 of 17 people found the following review helpful

Prehistoric Past Revealed: The Four Billion Year History of Life on Earth 26 May 2007

By Get Real - Published on Amazon.com

Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase

For content and quality of printing, I'd give this book 4 stars, however, it is extremely poorly bound. The pages began falling out as I turned them very early in the book and continued to do so. I now have a loose collection of them. The 'book' will go in the trash as soon as I finish it, just because I can't stand the mess it has become. Definitely NOT worth the money paid, even though it was only about $14.

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