Darwin puzzled over why ancient Precambrian rocks seemed barren of life. Brasier describes the quest to shed light on Darwin's Lost World, the discovery of its strange creatures, and what drove the sudden flurry of evolution called the Cambrian Explosion, amid tales told with relish of expeditions t[...]

In the follow up to Darwin's Lost World, Martin Brasier introduces the quest for the missing history of life and the cell. Through a series of journeys it emerges that the modern plant cell is one of the most deeply puzzling and unlikely steps in the whole history of life. Decoding this puzzle is a [...]