Survivors

An awe-inspiring journey through the eons and across the globe, in search of visible traces of evolution in the living creatures which have survived from earlier times and whose stories speak to us of seminal events in the history of life. On a beach in Delaware where the horseshoe crab shuffles its way through a violent romance, we catch a glimpse of life 450 million years ago, shortly after it diversified on the ocean floor. Along a stretch of Australian coastline, we bear witness to the sights and sounds that would have greeted a Precambrian dawn. Finally, in the dense rainforests of New Zealand, we marvel at a living fossil which has survived unchanged since before the dissolution of the Gondwana supercontinent. Written with sparkle and gusto, this wonderfully engrossing exploration of the world s oldest flora and fauna brilliantly combines the best science writing about the origins of life with an explorer s sense of adventure and a poet s wonder at the natural world.