The Changing Globe -- The Changing Face of the Earth -- Vendian Times -- Early Cambrian Times -- Late Cambrian Times -- Ordovician Times -- Silurian Times -- Devonian Times -- Carboniferous Times -- Permian Times -- Triassic Times -- Jurassic Times -- Early Cretaceous Times -- Later Cretaceous Times -- K-T Times -- Early Tertiary Times -- Mid-Tertiary Times -- Late Tertiary Times -- Quaternary Times -- Ancient Worlds -- The Origin of Life -- Aquatic Microbes: Life Begins -- The Vendian Period -- Complex Organisms Emerge -- Cambrian Explosion -- Early Cambrian Marine Life -- Late Cambrian Period -- The Burgess Seaworld -- Pikaia -- Our Ancestor? -- The Ordovician Period -- Life in the Ordovician Seas -- The Silurian Period -- Life on Land and in the Sea -- The Devonian Period -- Equipping Life for Land -- Carboniferous Age -- The First Tetrapods -- Coal and Reptiles -- The Permian Age -- Ancient Mammal Relatives -- Mass Extinctions -- The Triassic Period -- Dawn of the Dinosaurs -- Reptilian Domination -- The Jurassic Period -- Reptiles of the Jurassic Seas -- Discovering Extinction and Deep Time -- Life Takes to the Air -- Early Mammals -- Early Cretaceous Period -- The World of the Iguanodon Dinosaur -- Inventing and Picturing the Dinosaurs -- Later Cretaceous Period -- The Mammals and Dinosaurs of Mongolia -- Hadrosaurs and Carnosaurs -- The Beast of Maastricht -- The K-T Boundary -- The Last of the Dinosaurs -- Impact from Outer Space -- Victims and Survivors -- Early Tertiary Age -- Plants and Animals of Messel -- Opening the North Atlantic -- The Evolution of Plants and Flowers -- Mid-Tertiary Period -- Riversleigh Marsupials -- The Himalayas and the Tibetan Plateau -- Late Tertiary Period -- Hominids and Other Mammals -- Mammals of the Americas -- Divergence of Apes and Hominids -- The Quaternary Age -- The Russian Mammoth Steppe -- The Human Journey -- Beyond the Ice Age -- Earth Fact File -- Earth History -- The Geological Timescale -- Methods of Dating: Innovations and Discoveries -- Geological Controversies -- Rock 170 -- Metamorphic and Sedimentary Rock -- Earth Processes: Plate Tectonics -- Earthquakes and Tsunamis -- Volcanoes -- Sedimentation -- The Present as a Key to the Past -- What Next? -- Fossils: Classification -- Fossil Formation -- Fossil Discoveries: Reconstructing the Past -- Evolution and the Fossil Record -- Living Fossils and the Molecular Clock -- "Progress" and Catastrophe
Summary:
A dynamic portrait of the Earth and the interplay among the various forces that shaped both the planet and the life upon it. Chronicles the evolution of plant and animal life, from the first single-celled microbes to land-dwelling mammals
