For billions of years following the birth of the earth, this planet was too harsh. Rippling seas, volcanic eruptions, constant changes in the atmosphere. Life has repeated extinction and evolution while facing all kinds of difficulties. Life persisted until the spread of Homo sapiens. “The birth of the earth” to “the extinction of sapiens, the extinction of life” is condensed into one volume.Supercompression Complete history of life on earth]depicts the story of that miracle. Jared Diamond (Author of “Guns, Germs, and Steel”) wrote “The author presents an exciting picture of life changing like a kaleidoscope. A book for everyone to enjoy!”, etc., are recommended by the world’s leading experts.this bookIn commemoration of the publication of , a part of the contents will be specially released.
cauldron of magma
About 252 million years ago, near the end of the Permian period, the mantle plume (a stream of fluidized magma) rising from deep within the Earth over millions of years was the overlying crust. came into contact with it and melted it.
At the end of the Permian, there was no need to descend into the earth in search of hell.
Because it came out of hell to the surface.
Mantle plumes spread across what is now China, where once lush rainforests turned into cauldrons of magma, oozing lava and fumes of noxious gases that increased greenhouse effects, acidified the oceans, and created ozone. Ripped to pieces, lowering Earth’s shield once morest UV rays.
ferocious lava
About five million years later, when life had not yet recovered from this disaster, another disaster occurred.
The Chinese mantle plume was just an appetizer.
The main dish was an even larger mantle plume, rising from deep within the earth and burrowing into the surface in what is now western Siberia.
The ground was shattered, and lava oozed out from countless fissures, covering an area the size of the present-day America continent from the east coast to just before the Rocky Mountains in black basalt thousands of meters thick.
painful torture
The ash, smoke, and gases that accompanied it killed nearly every living thing on Earth.
But it didn’t happen instantly. Painful torture with toxic substances lasted for 500,000 years.
The first devil’s brew was enough carbon dioxide to create a greenhouse effect that raised the average global temperature by several degrees.
Parts of Pangaea, already suffering from oxygen deprivation and scorching heat, became completely uninhabitable.
The impact on the coral reefs lining the Tethys Sea was just devastating.
coral death
The sun-loving algae that live in the jelly-like polyps that make up coral reefs were very sensitive to temperature.
As the water warmed up, the algae moved away from their habitats and the coral body polyps died.
When the coral disappeared, many creatures that lived in the coral became extinct.
ozone layer damaged
But that was not all.
The volcano scorched the sky with acid. Sulfur dioxide (sulfurous gas) bubbled up into the sky.
The sulfur dioxide formed microscopic particles around which water vapor condensed, forming clouds that reflected sunlight into space, temporarily cooling the surface of the earth.
In between the heat, there were occasional bouts of bitter cold.
However, the sulfur dioxide mixed with the rain and falling on land turned into acid, tearing plants from the ground and seeping into the soil, burning the trees in the forest and turning them into charred stumps on the spot.
Trace amounts of hydrochloric acid and hydrofluoric acid amplified the pain.
And before it rained, the hydrochloric acid damaged the ozone layer, which protects the earth from harmful UV rays.
corpses of animals and plants
Plankton in the ocean and plants on land would have taken up most of the carbon dioxide in normal times, but the plants were already under stress.
As a result, carbon dioxide was not absorbed by plants and was washed away by rain, accelerating weathering.
With no vegetation to stabilize the soil, it was washed away by the wind and rain, leaving rocky outcroppings. The sea turned into a thick soup, murky with sand and croutons made from the carcasses of animals and plants killed on land.
Putrefying bacteria attacked the corpse, using up what little oxygen was left.
Poisonous algae thrived on the remains, fertilizing them, but eventually withered away.
worse
The bubbling acid in the water attacked and melted the shells of sea creatures it touched.
Even if they survived the dark, stagnant waters, the calcified skeleton upon which many sea creatures depended became thin, brittle, and eventually unable to even form a shell.
And worse was waiting.
The mantle plume destabilized the methane gas that had previously frozen beneath the Arctic Ocean.
burning world
Methane gas rose to the surface of the sea with a roaring sound and a plume of smoke, and spewed hundreds of meters into the atmosphere.
Methane is a much more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide.
The greenhouse effect soared and the world burned to the ground.
Still not enough, eruptions occur every few thousand years, releasing mercury vapors into the atmosphere where they are suffocated, gassed, burned, boiled, roasted, fried, and melted. polluted everything that had not been washed away.
Departure of the Trilobite
As a result, 19 out of 20 marine species and 7 out of 10 terrestrial animals were driven to extinction.
Some of the animals that died did not leave offspring or relatives.
For example, the extinction killed the last trilobite. So did the stemmed echinoderms, the sea buds.
Almost all shellfish have died, either by being scorched with acid or by drowning in rotting matter in the airless sea.
Only a few species survived.
hardly survive
On land, generations of amphibian and reptile life have been wiped out. All legions of lumbering, horned, warty pareiasaurs are gone.
Similarly, sail-backed pelycosaurs did not survive the Permian. Its relatives, the therapsids, also barely survived.
The large herds of dicynodons that fed on horsetails and ferns on the Permian plains were almost entirely culled, along with the canine-toothed gorgonopsids that hunted them.
Amphibians were completely driven back into the original waters from which they crawled out during the Devonian.
Anything that had built up a life on land and adopted a more reptilian way of life and habits became extinct.
The ancestors of all amniotes emerged from this group of creatures during the early Carboniferous period, when terrestrial life was within reach.
But there are no creatures like them left today.
bottom of the abyss
The “Gates of Hell” opened a little in China and flew wide open in Siberia, sucking almost all life into the abyss.
The land turned into a bare, silent desert.
The few remaining plants clung to the nearly dying shipwreck of Earth.
The sea was as good as dead. The coral reefs had disappeared, and the ocean floor was covered with a foul-smelling carpet of slime.
life comes back
It was as if life had reverted to precambrian times.
But life comes back.
And a colorful, gorgeous, noisy carnival that the world has never seen will unfold.
(This manuscript was written by Henry Gee“Ultra-compressed life history of the earth”Excerpt from )
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“Ultra-compressed life history of the earth”presents the entire history from “the birth of the earth” to “the extinction of sapiens, the extinction of life”. Please check it.
Senior Editor, Nature
Former professor at the University of California. Born in London in 1962. He completed his PhD at the University of Cambridge. His specialties are paleontology and evolutionary biology. Since 1987 he has been an editor of the scientific journal Nature, where he is currently the senior editor of biology. However, his working style is more of a participant than a director, contributing to numerous paleontological discoveries, including feathered dinosaurs and the earliest fish. He has appeared as an expert on television and radio, and has produced a program called the BBC World Science Service.
Translated by: Kaoru Takeuchi
Born in Tokyo in 1960. He is a doctor of science and a science writer. He graduated from the College of Liberal Arts and Science at the University of Tokyo, and completed a doctoral course at McGill University. He is active in a wide range of fields, including novels, essays, and translations. Main translations include “Why are the beginning and end of the universe the same?” (Roger Penrose, Shinchosha), “WHOLE BRAIN: How to move your brain to make your mind lighter” (Jill Bolt Taylor, NHK Publishing). , WHAT IS LIFE?
Understanding the history of life on Earth will change the way we see the world–From the translator
As the name suggests, by Henry Gee, the biology editor of the world-renowned scientific journal Nature (originally a scientist specializing in paleontology and evolutionary biology),Supercompression Complete history of life on earthis. When I first got my hands on the original, I remember being surprised at how reckless the attempt was.
After all, no one might have imagined that writing regarding 3.8 billion years of life on earth from its birth to its extinction (?) in just 200 pages (original) was an impossible task.
I thought it would take me a long time to finish reading it, since it was a history book regarding an eternity of time. However, it was recommended by world-famous non-fiction writer and evolutionary biologist Jared Diamond (“Guns, Germs, and Steel” translated by Akira Kurabotsu, Soshisha Bunko), so I began to turn the pages. be.
When you actually start readingMysteriously, I fell into the illusion that a dynamic image of life’s birth, evolution, and extinction was flowing before my eyes, and I wanted to read more and more. My reading speed accelerated, and before I knew it, I was finished reading in just a few hours.
It left me with a fresh surprise and excitement, as if I had traveled through 4.6 billion years in a time machine.
Literature can change your life, butthis bookis the same.When you learn the story of the birth and extinction of life on earth, you will think deeply regarding oil, global warming, endangered species, jaws, ears, menopause, etc., and the way you see the world will change. It’s life changing.
Information on newly published books
Jared Diamond (Author of Guns, Germs and Steel)
“This book is the best book currently available regarding the profound changes that have happened to our planet and its inhabitants during the billions of years since the Earth was born. The author is kaleidoscopic. An exciting depiction of the changing nature of life, this is a book that all mankind can enjoy!」
Daniel E. Lieberman (Professor of Biological Sciences, Harvard University, author of Six Million Years of the Human Body)
“A delightful, concise and epic masterpiece that cannot be overlooked. The author condenses all the improbable and astonishing histories of life on Earth with charm, lightness, scientific accuracy and admiration.” I mightn’t let go of this book, and neither can you.”
