SCIENCE

When the Earth Was Green review: Gripping account of how plants and animals co-evolved

An artist’s impression of an environment where prehistoric plants thrived

Christian Jegou/Science Photo Library

When the Earth Was Green
Riley Black (St Martin’s Press (US, available now; UK, later this month))

The behaviour of plants is invisible to the naked human eye. They operate on timescales our imaginations can’t entertain, and they run roughshod over familiar categories of self, other and community. I confess that I find them boring.

Luckily, others don’t – Riley Black, a palaeontologist and an occasional New Scientist contributor, for one. Wandering among (or is it through?) a 14,000-year-old aspen clone, a single organism made…


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