Jan Zalasiewicz is Professor of Paleobiology at the University of Leicester, before that working at the British Geological Survey. A field geologist, palaeontologist and stratigrapher, he teaches various aspects of geology and Earth history to undergraduate and postgraduate students, and is a researcher into fossil ecosystems and environments across over half a billion years of geological time. He has published over a hundred papers in scientific journals and is the author of The Earth After Us: What legacy will humans leave in the rocks? (OUP, 2008).

In this narrative of the Earth's long and dramatic history, Jan Zalasiewicz shows how many events in the Earth's ancient past can be deciphered from a single pebble. He explores how geologists reach deep into the past by forensic analysis of even the tiniest amounts of mineral matter, demonstrating and revealing Earth's extraordinary story.

• Prologue


• 1: Stardust


• 2: From the Depths of the Earth


• 3: Distant Lands


• 4: To the Rendezvous


• 5: The Sea


• 6: Ghosts Observed


• 7: Ghosts in Absentia


• 8: Where on Earth?


• 9: Gold!


• 10: The Oil Window


• 11: Making Mountains


• 12: Breaking the Surface


• 13: Futures