The Ultimate Biography of Earth From the Big Bang to Today!

The ultimate biography of the ultimate subject—planet Earth! Featuring humorous interviews, bold illustrations, cutting-edge science, and four and a half billion years of history, readers ages 10 and up will get to know the place we call home and the importance of caring for our planet well into the future! 
 
Here it is—the celebrity biography we didn’t know we wanted, and now can’t get enough of—the story of Earth, our fascinating little home in the solar system with all its crazy life forms and dramatic geological ages. Travel back through the eras, eons, and ages, and discover the major extinction events (sorry, dinosaurs!) the introduction of new species (hello, humans!), and how the land shifted and changed over time to become what we know today (Pangea who?)
 
From the chaotic Hadean eon with its huge oceans of molten rock to today’s Cenozoic era, aka the Age of Mammals, get an in-depth look at how Earth has changed in the past and how it’s changing now. Learn about the Great Oxygenation Event. Meet some of the planet’s wildest life-forms, like Megatherium—a sloth as big as an elephant—and Hallucigenia—the walking, spiky worm so named because the scientists who first discovered the fossils thought they were hallucinating. Watch the continents separate, crash together, and re-form. And catch up on the basics, like why the sky is blue and how tectonic plates create mountains, earthquakes and volcanoes. 
 
It's the ultimate biography of the best home in the galaxy for kids who are history buffs, science buffs, or just plain curious to know more about the world around them!


 

 Nick Lund is a nature writer who mostly writes silly things about birds on Twitter when he should be working. His
writing on birds and nature has appeared in Audubon magazine, National Parks magazine, Slate.com, the Washington Post, the Maine
Sportsman, the Portland Phoenix, Down East magazine, and others. He is a graduate of the University of Maine School of Law and has worked in federal energy policy in Washington, DC, before returning to Maine with his wife and son to work for Maine Audubon.
 
Jason Ford has worked for a wide range of clients and has become an author with the publication of the popular kids’ activity book—The Super Book for Superheroes and the follow-up title, The Monster Book of Zombies, Spooks and Ghouls. His third title, The Cosmic Book of Space, Aliens and Beyond, was released in autumn 2021.

 
Chapter 1: The Very Beginning—The Formation of Earth through the Hadean Eon
Chapter 2: Life Has Evolved, and It Itches—The Archean Eon
Chapter 3: A Breath of Fresh Air—The Proterozoic Eon
Chapter 4: An Explosion! But the Good Kind—The Cambrian Period
Chapter 5: The Big Chill—The Ordovician and Silurian Periods
Chapter 6: When Plants Killed Everything—The Devonian Period
Chapter 7: Good Living and the Great Dying—The Carboniferous and Permian Periods
Chapter 8: King Lizard Time—The Triassic and Jurassic Periods
Chapter 9: The Other Big Bang—The Cretaceous Periods
Chapter 10: You Are Here—The Cenozoic Era
Final Notes from Interview with Earth
How You Can Protect Earth’s Future
Ask the Earth Q&A
All the Time in the Universe
Pronunciation Guide
Further Reading/Resources TK
Index
Author and Illustrator Bios