"Georges-Louis Leclerc, le comte de Buffon's The Epochs of Nature, originally published as Les Époques de la Nature in 1778, is one of the first great popular science books, a work of style and insight that was devoured by Catherine the Great of Russia and influenced Humboldt, D…
In seven epochs, Buffon reveals the main features of an evolving Earth, from its hard rock substrate to the sedimentary layers on top, from the minerals and fossils found within these layers to volcanoes, earthquakes, and rises and falls in sea level--and he even touches on age-…
How old is the universe? How are humans related to a sponge? Where did most of the world's water come from? How much would a complete T Rex skeleton cost? Where did the Himalayas come from? Which came first, the chicken or the egg?
Prologue; 1. Stardust; 2. From the Depths of the Earth; 3. Distant Lands; 4. To the Rendezvous; 5. The Sea; 6. Ghosts Observed; 7. Ghosts in Absentia; 8. Where on Earth?; 9. Gold!; 10. The Oil Window; 11. Making Mountains; 12. Breaking the Surface; 13. Futures.
Take a pebble. A slate pebble, say, from a beach in Wales. Look at its rich grey, cut by veins of white quartz. Look closely. There are other markings too... Captured within are grand stories that reach back to long-dead stars, into the depths of the Earth, to vanished continent…
"Every pebble has many stories to tell. Its particular atoms, its crystals, its minerals, its grains, its textures, its strata, its tiny fossils bear evidence to a history that stretches back billions of years."--Book flap.
This is the story of a single pebble. It is just a normal pebble, as you might pick up on holiday - on a beach in Wales, say. Its history, though, carries us into abyssal depths of time, and across the farthest reaches of space. This is a narrative of the Earth's long and dramat…
