The author recounts his participation in explorations of underwater ruins to search for evidence of ancient cities that existed during the last Ice Age, and discusses how the stories of these cities are preserved in ancient myths.

The story of our home planet and the organisms spread across its surface is far more spectacular than any Hollywood blockbuster, filled with enough plot twists to rival a bestselling thriller. But only recently have we begun to piece together the whole mystery into a coherent narrative. Drawing on his decades of field research and up-to-the-minute understanding of the latest science, geologist Andrew H. Knoll delivers a biography of Earth, charting...

Introduces readers to what rocks are and how they form.

Explains why an awareness of Earth's temporal rhythms is critical to planetary survival and offers suggestions for how to create a more time-literate society. "Why an awareness of Earth's temporal rhythms is critical to our planetary survival: Few of us have any conception of the enormous timescales in our planet's long history, and this narrow perspective underlies many of the environmental problems we are creating for ourselves. The passage of...

"A remarkable exploration of the science, history, and politics of the Anthropocene, one of the most important scientific ideas of our time, from two world-renowned experts. Meteorites, mega-volcanoes, and plate tectonics--the old forces of nature--have transformed Earth for millions of years. They are now joined by a new geological force--humans. Our actions have driven Earth into a new geological epoch, the Anthropocene. For the first time in our...

The author surveys the traces we will leave for peoples in the very distant future. He shows that modern civilization has created objects and landscapes with the potential to endure through deep time, including the plastic polluting the oceans, the nuclear waste entombed within the earth, and the thirty million miles of paved roads spanning the planet. This is his meditation on climate change and the Anthropocene, and an urgent search for fossils--industrial,...

"How Finland's nuclear waste experts discern far future Earths, and what the rest of us non-Finns and non-experts can learn from them"--