Welcome to Litsy!

"[A]n extraordinary book." �Marcia Bjornerud, author of Turning to Stone A revelatory journey through four moments in Earth�s deep past, and their lessons for our future. The epic stories of our planet�s 4.54-billion-year history are written in strata�ages-old remnants of ancient seafloors, desert dunes, and riverbeds striping landscapes around the world. In this brilliantly original debut work, science writer Laura Poppick decodes strata to lead us on a journey through four global transformations that made our lives on Earth possible: the first accumulations of oxygen in the atmosphere; the deep freezes of "Snowball Earth"; the rise of mud on land and accompanying proliferation of plants; and the dinosaurs� reign on a hothouse planet Poppick introduces us to the researchers who have devoted their careers to understanding the events of deep time, including the world�s leading stegosaur scientist. She travels to sites as various as a Minnesotan iron mine that runs half a mile deep and a corner of the Australian Outback where glacial deposits date from the coldest times on Earth. Ultimately, she demonstrates that the planet�s oceans, continents, atmosphere, life, and ice have always conspired to bring stability to Earth, even if we are only just beginning to understand how these different facets interact. A work in the tradition of John McPhee, Strata allows us to observe how the planet has responded to past periods of environmental upheaval, and shows how Earth�s ancient narratives could hold lessons for our present and future.