You are viewing your 1 free article this month. Login to read more articles.
Bella Shand at Granta has acquired world English rights in a book that provides a radically new view of meteorites and their role in the evolution of life on Earth. In Incoming: Or Why We Should Learn to Stop Worrying and Love the Meteorite, the science writer Ted Nield (Supercontinent) shows that far from leading to pestilence, global holocaust and mass extinction, meteorites are coming to be seen as immensely useful messengers from the cosmos.
Contrary to popular belief, he argues, a meteorite or comet probably didn't wipe out the dinosaurs 65 million years ago; and in fact meteorites, he suggests, may well have been responsible for one of our planet's greatest bursts in biodiversity 147 million years ago.