The book traces the long history of life on Earth from its appearance 3.5-3.8 billion years ago to the present day. The author presents a fascinating and accessible story about the origin of living matter, about the stages in the evolution of life and the diversity of the organismic world. It introduces us to the emergence, development and disappearance of various groups of plants and animals. Today there are about 10 million species of animals and plants on our planet. And the entire history of the Earth is enlivened by the amazing procession of over 4.5 billion species of plants and animals.
The book answers various questions about the origin of species, about organism communities during different geological epochs, about the successes and failures of biological evolution, about the attempts to explain where we come from, who we are and where we are going.