Strata: Stories from Deep Time: Laura Poppick

Laura Poppick is a science and environmental journalist whose stories have appeared in the New York Times, Scientific American, National Geographic, and elsewhere. She has been listed as a finalist for the National Association of Science Writers Science in Society Journalism Award and the Maine Literary Awards. Her debut book, Strata: Stories from Deep Time (W.W. Norton), provides context for modern environmental change by exploring four other moments of global transformation in Earth’s deep geologic history. She lives in Portland, ME.

Strata is described as a revelatory journey through four moments in Earth’s deep past, and their lessons for our future. The epic stories of our planet’s 4.54-billion-year history are written in strata―ages-old remnants of ancient seafloors, desert dunes, and riverbeds striping landscapes around the world. In this brilliantly original debut work, science writer Laura Poppick decodes strata to lead us on a journey through four global transformations that made our lives on Earth possible: the first accumulations of oxygen in the atmosphere; the deep freezes of “Snowball Earth”; the rise of mud on land and accompanying proliferation of plants; and the dinosaurs’ reign on a hothouse planet