Snowball Earth The Story of the Great Global Catastrophe That Spawned Life As We Know It

ONE First Fumblings This is an extraordinary time to be alive. Look around you, take in the intricate complexities of life on Earth, and then consider this: complex life is a very recent invention. Our home planet spent most of its long history coated in nothing but simple, primordial slime. For billions of years, the only earthlings were made of goo. Then, suddenly, everything changed. At one abrupt moment roughly 600 million years ago, something shook the Earth out of its complacency. From this came the beginnings of eyes, teeth, legs, wings, feathers, hair and brains. Every insect, every ape and antelope, every fish, bird and worm. Whatever triggered this new beginning was ultimately responsible for the existence of you and everyone you've ever known. So what was it? Paul Hoffman, part-time marathon runner, full-time geologist, and obsessive, intense seeker of glory, thinks he knows. He believes he has finally struck science gold. Now a full professor at Harvard University and a world-renowned scientist, he has uncovered evidence for the biggest climate catastrophe the Earth has ever endured. And from that disaster, according to Paul, came a remarkable new redemption. Shark Bay shows up from the air as a snag in the smooth coastline of Western Australia. Five hundred miles north of Perth, it lies just at the place where tropical and temperate zones rub shoulders. The area around the bay is a powerful reminder of how far we have come since primordial slime ruled the world. It is full of varied, vivid life. This is one of the few places in the world where wild dolphins commune with humans, every day, regular as clockwork. At 7:00 a.m. each day a park ranger dressed in khaki uniform emerges from a wooden hut to focus a pair of binoculars on the horizon. Perhaps half an hour later, he'll spot the first dolphin fin. Somehow the word immediately spreads. Where there were only four or five people on the sandy beach, suddenly fifty or sixty appear. Three harassed rangers do their best to marshal them into an orderly line. Everyone will get a chance to see the dolphins. No one will be permitted to touch them. No one must go more than knee-deep in the water. Another ranger deftly diverts the enormous wild white pelicans away from the beach by flicking on a water sprinkler. The birds flock around with gaping jaws--in this desert landscape, fresh water is irresistible. The dolphins and their calves arrive. One of the rangers, a wireless headset amplifying her voice, wades up and down in front of the spectators, introducing the dolphins ("This is Nicky and Nomad, Surprise and her calf Sparky") and reciting useful dolphin facts. The crowd surges into the water, like acolytes seeking a Jordanian baptism, their expressions beatific. The dolphins are the crowd pullers--more than six hundred of them live here. But Shark Bay is also famous for the rest of its wildlife. The bay contains more than 2,600 tiger sharks, not to mention hammerheads and the occasional great white. The tigers show up in the water as streamlined shadows up to twelve feet long; often they are skulking beside patches of sea grass in the hope that dinner will emerge in the form of a blunt-nosed, lumbering gray dugong. Dugongs, or sea cows, are supposedly the creatures behind the mermaid myths, though I can't see it myself. They are too prosaic, placidly chewing away at the end of a "food trail," a line of clear water that they have cut, caterpillar-like, through the fuzzy green sea grass. They're exceptionally shy and rare, but here, among the largest and richest sea-grass meadows in the world, are a staggering ten thousand of them--tiger sharks notwithstanding. Then there are sea snakes, green turtles, and migrating humpback whales. And just a little to the north, where the tropics begin in earnest, lies Coral Bay--one of the world's top ten dive sites. Come and dive the NavyWalker, Gabrielle is the author of 'Snowball Earth The Story of the Great Global Catastrophe That Spawned Life As We Know It', published 2004 under ISBN 9781400051250 and ISBN 1400051258.