Supercontinent: Ten Billion Years in the Life of our Planet

(Paperback)

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Description

Two hundred and fifty million years from now, all the landmasses on Earth will come together in a single supercontinent - not the first to form on the planet, nor the last. It is scarcely a century since we first understood how Pangaea, the supercontinent which dinosaurs roamed, split apart, but scientists can now look back three-quarters of a billion years to reconstruct Pangaea's predecessor, and computer-model the shape of the Earth's far-distant future.


Ted Nield tells the story of how that science emerged, from the Atlantis-seeking visionaries and madmen who have been imagining lost continents for centuries to the scientists today who are drawing information out of the oldest rocks on Earth.


Supercontinent will appeal to readers who enjoyed Simon Winchester's The Map That Changed the World and Richard Fortey's The Earth: An Intimate Biography.

Reviews

The four-dimensional complexities of our happy little planet - "earth's immeasurable surprise" - are made elegantly accessible by Ted Nield in this truly exceptional book. At least until the next major discovery it deserves to become the standard work, ideal for students of the subject, and hugely enjoyable to those for whom the world remains an unfathomable enigma -- Simon Winchester

Author Bio

Ted Nield holds a doctorate in geology and currently works for the Geology Society of London, where he is Editor of their monthly magazine Geoscientist. He is Chair of the British Association of Science Writers and Chair of the Outreach Programme of the International Year of the Earth, a UN-backed venture. He lives in London.