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Sign up todayWhen the Earth Was Green
Plants, Animals, and Evolution's Greatest Romance
Narrator
Wren Mack
This audiobook uses AI narration.
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Length
9 hours 36 minutes
Language
English
“You'll root for these creatures and their survival. A marvelous narration.”—Booklist
“Paleontologist Riley Black’s vivid writing and Wren Mack’s wonderstruck narration make these vignettes of prehistoric life on Earth fascinating listening.”—AudioFile
Winner, A Friend of Darwin Award, 2024
A gorgeously composed look at the longstanding relationship between prehistoric plants and life on Earth
Fossils plants allow us to touch the lost worlds from billions of years of evolutionary backstory. Each petrified leaf and root show us that dinosaurs, saber-toothed cats, and even humans would not exist without the evolutionary efforts of their leafy counterparts. It has been the constant growth of plants that have allowed so many of our favorite, fascinating prehistoric creatures to evolve, oxygenating the atmosphere, coaxing animals onto land, and forming the forests that shaped our ancestors’ anatomy. It is impossible to understand our history without them. Or, our future.
Using the same scientifically informed narrative technique that listeners loved in the award-winning The Last Days of the Dinosaurs, Riley Black brings us back in time to prehistoric seas, swamps, forests, and savannas where critical moments in plant evolution unfolded. Each chapter stars plants and animals alike, underscoring how the interactions between species have helped shape the world we call home. As the chapters move upwards in time, Black guides listeners along the burgeoning trunk of the Tree of Life, stopping to appreciate branches of an evolutionary story that links the world we know with one we can only just perceive now through the silent stone, from ancient roots to the present.
A Macmillan Audio production from St. Martin’s Press.
RILEY BLACK has been heralded as “one of our premier gifted young science writers” and is the critically-acclaimed author of Skeleton Keys, My Beloved Brontosaurus, Written in Stone, and When Dinosaurs Ruled. A science correspondent for Smithsonian Magazine, Riley has become a widely-recognized expert on paleontology and has appeared on programs such as NOVA, Science Friday, and All Things Considered. When not writing about fossils, Riley joins museum crews to find new fossils across the American west.
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Audiobook details
Author:
Riley Black
Narrator:
Wren Mack
ISBN:
9781250354211
Length:
9 hours 36 minutes
Language:
English
Publisher:
Macmillan Audio
Publication date:
February 25, 2025
Edition:
Unabridged
Libro.fm rank:
#7,418 Overall
Genre rank:
#130 in Environment & Nature
Reviews
Praise for When the Earth was Green:
"Black’s creative writing style and vivid descriptions, paired with well-chosen scientific facts, transport readers to verdant, sometimes violent scenes from our planet’s past." —Booklist
"BLACK IS A POET OF PREHISTORY, narrating the final moments of a gooey mosquito or the accidental, tree-bound voyage of a monkey with the detail of someone who was there and saw it all, millions of years ago.... This is a book steeped with vegetal beauty, one that unfurls like a flower, blooming." —Sabrina Imbler, author of How Far the Light Reaches and staff writer at Defector
“BRILLIANT, BRIMMING WITH INSIGHT, and boundlessly entertaining. Black launches a grand tour of deep time, surveying the influence of plant life on animal evolution (and vice versa). It’s a 1.2 billion-year fandango, masterfully chronicled.” —Jason Roberts, author of Every Living Thing and A Sense of the World
“AN ESSENTIAL, EXTRAORDINARY STORY...Black shows us how the natural world has always been a splendid, entangled scrum of interactions and transactions." —Daniel Lewis, author of Twelve Trees, Dibner Senior Curator for the History of Science and Technology, Huntington Library
"WHAT A BEAUTIFUL BOOK! I couldn’t put it down. Black has crafted a prose so vivid and precise that it feels more like watching a film. Through Black’s "vignettes," the reader is taken on a breathtaking exploration of life's interconnectedness." —Paco Calvo, author of Planta Sapiens
Praise for The Last Days of the Dinosaurs:
Winner 2023 AAAS/Subaru Prize for Excellence in Science Writing
"Black blends the intricacies of science with masterful storytelling for a cracking, enchanting read." —Newsweek
"This is top-drawer science writing." —Publishers Weekly, starred review
"Exquisitely written." —Booklist
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