P.B

Includes bibliographical references and index.

1. Deep time on Cambridge Heath Road -- Rocks and ice -- 2. Box 48903C16 -- 3. Shallow time -- 4. The auctioneer -- 5. Time lords -- 6. The demon in the hills -- 7. A lost ocean -- 8. The fiery fields -- Plants and creatures -- 9. Ammonite -- 10. The first forest -- 11. What we talk about when we talk about dinosaurs -- 12. Colouring deep times -- Man-made -- 13. Urban geology -- 14. In search of the Anthropocene -- 15. 'This place is not a place of honour' -- 16. On the beach.

"From the secret fossils of London to the 3-billion-year-old rocks of the Scottish Highlands, and from state-of-the-art Californian laboratories to one of the world's most dangerous volcanic complexes hidden beneath the green hills of western Naples, set out on an adventure to those parts of the world where the Earth's life-story is written into the landscape. Helen Gordon turns a novelist's eye on the extraordinary scientists who are piecing together this planetary drama. She gets to grips with the theory that explains how it all works, plate tectonics, a breakthrough as significant in its way as evolution or quantum mechanics, but much younger than either, and still with many secrets to reveal. And she looks to the future of our world, with or without us."--Publisher's description.