Introduction
Birth of a planet
Earth's oldest materials
Geological dating
The oldest rocks
The early atmosphere
The evolving hydrosphere
Layered earth
Probing earth's interior
Tectonic earth
The molten core
"D double-prime"
Exploring the mantle
The base of the crust
Oceanic crust
Long-lived continents
Earth's continental rocks
Continental rifting
Making mountains
Tectonic uplift
Glacial puzzles
Earthquakes and plate tectonics
What makes faults slip?
A case study in volcanism
Island arc volcanoes
Hot spot volcanoes
Earth's greatest eruptions
First fossils?
LUCA
Controversial origins
Rising oxygen levels
From simple to complex life
Rodinia
Snowball earth
The phosphorus effect
Gondwana and Pangea
Mysterious ediacarans
The first animals
Secrets of the sponge genome
The Doushantuo embryos
Life in the Cambrian seas
Soft bodies from the Ordovician
Avalonia
Ordovician boom and bust
Living on the land
Oxygen booms and growth spurts
Four feet on the ground
The fossils of East Kirkton
Joggins fossil cliffs
Coal forests and glaciation
Early Permian life
The great dying
Triassic survivors
Rise of the dinosaurs
Late Triassic life
Life in Triassic seas
Mongolian mammals
Africa's giant dinosaurs
Australia's polar dinosaurs
India's journey north
Evolution of flowering plants
Sauropod puzzles
Linking birds and dinosaurs
Dinosaur eggs and babies
The end of the Mesozoic
The Cenozoic recovery
Primate beginnings
PETM-the great warming
The great rift valley
Changing climates of the past
The australopithecine clan
The real "great flood"
The Quaternary ice age
Genus homo
The first art
Neanderthal mysteries
Unexpected cousins
The younger Dryas
Megafloods
The Holocene rebound
Domestication of plants and animals
Disappearing megafauna
Biodiversity
Extremophiles
The census of marine life
Human overkill
The carbon dioxide record
Climate change and mountain erosion
Changing sea levels
Habitats on the move
Danger from the soil?
Freshwater challenges
Does coal have a future?
Atmospheric pollution
Ocean hypnoxia
Energy futures
The Athabasca tar sands
Threat from the skies
Future sea levels
Future tectonics
The fate of the earth
Glossary and timeline.