History of Life

In this undergraduate text, the author has aimed to write an introductory course book on the history of life suitable for term-length lectures and for students with a limited background in science, studying the subject for the first time. Based on the author's considerable experience of teaching just such a course, the book is structured as a series of essays on the major events and innovations in the history of life on earth. Each essay discusses how we know what happened and how we can test suggestions about causes. Constant reference to current life studies of ecological and biological principles and how these can be used to interpret the past and using a series of vivid case studies, the reader is led through a learning curve of valuable scientific principles and methods. The book is suitable for introductory courses on the history of life, introductory palaeontology, and evolution across the disciplines of geology, palaeontology, and evolutionary biology.