Plants have profoundly moulded the Earth’s climate and the evolutionary trajectory of life. Far from being ‘silent witnesses to the passage of time’, plants are dynamic components of our world, shaping the environment throughout the past as much as the environment has shaped them.  In The Emerald Planet, Professor David Beerling of Sheffield University (https://www.shef.ac.uk/aps/staff-and-students/acadstaff/beerling) puts plants centre stage, […]

The Fisher Professor of Natural History and Professor of Earth and Planetary Sciences at Harvard University takes us on a tour of the first 3 billion years of evolutionary history. Australopithecines, dinosaurs, trilobites -such fossils conjure up images of lost worlds filled with vanished organisms. But in the full history of life, ancient animals, even the

Without our Sun in (the relatively) close proximity of 93 million miles it would be a cold and dark world indeed. It is the source of all our light and heat. The object is a massive ball of gas and plasma. Thanks to the nuclear fusion reactions taking place at its core, the Sun has been shining