The Story of Earth & Life: A Southern African Perspective on a 4.6-Billion-Year Journey. This item is unavailable.The Story of Earth & Life: A Southern African Perspective on a 4.6-Billion-Year Journey

Southern Africa is without equal in terms of geology, a treasure trove of valuable minerals with a geological history dating back some 3 600 million years. In addition, the evolution of plants and animals, especially mammals and dinosaurs, is well preserved in the region, which also has among the best records of the origin of modern man. The story of earth and life provides an insight into this remarkable history - how southern Africa's mineral deposits were formed, how its life evolved and how its landscape was shaped. Along the way readers will be enthralled by accounts of the Big Bang that marked the beginning of time and matter, by drifting and colliding continents, folding and fracturing rocks, meteors colliding with the Earth, volcanic eruptions, and the start of life. Other topics include why South Africa is so rich in minerals, how glacial deposits came to be found in the Karoo, why dinosaurs became extinct, how mammals developed from reptiles, and how closely humans are related to the apes. The answers to many such questions can be found in this title. Anyone interested in the landscape and ecosystems in which we live will be intrigued by this title.

Terence McCarthy is emeritus Professor of Mineral Geochemistry at the University of the Witwatersrand. He has wide research interests in the earth sciences, including economic and environmental geology, geochemistry and geomorphology, and is a leading expert on the geology of wetlands.

He is co-author of The Story of Earth and Life and How on Earth?

Prof. Bruce Rubidge is Distinguished Professor at the Evolutionary Studies Institute at the University of the Witwatersrand. Passionate about fossils, he is an authority on the formation of the Karoo Basin and the evolution of its fauna, especially the therapsid mammal-like reptiles and the stories they tell us about the ancestry of mammals. He currently lives in Graaff-Reinet where he has established the Karoo Origins fossil centre.