The Emerald Planet How Plants Changed Earth's History

'The past,' declared the celebrated palaeobotanist Albert Seward, 'seizes upon us with its shadowy hand and holds us to listen to its tale.'This book is the tale of our world's past - and future - as revealed by plants. Newly found clues in the fossil record show plants to be powerful agents of change, moulding the Earth's climate and affecting the evolutionary path of life over the immensity of geological time. They tell of how giant insects could once flourish, of an ancient ozone hole, and offer new explanations for past episodes of global warming. As we face the challenge of a changing climate today, theirs is a tale we cannotignore.