Life an unauthorized biography

Like Richard Fortey, one of my own first experiences of the full biography of life on Earth was Disney’s animation of Igor Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring, in the film Fantasia.

This book is a more accurate and complete version of the same. At the time he wrote this, Fortey was a senior paleontologist at the Natural History Museum in London, and a frequent BBC guest. I had previously read his Horseshoe Crabs and Velvet Worms: The Story of the Animals and Plants That Time Has Left Behind (US title), and enjoyed it enough to seek out this earlier and more foundational book.

More than the story told by paleontology, this book is also the story of paleontology, with Fortey relating his personal experiences and perspectives on various episodes in the history of the field.

Chapters are arranged chronologically, starting with the inception of life on Earth four billion years ago, moving through his own specialization during and around the Ordovicia