A planet in crisis. Travelling through climatic changes and mass extinctions of the past.

The Earth 252 million years ago: a planet in crisis. Huge volcanic eruptions. Animals and plants dies, a destroyed ozone layer and a sour and lifeless sea. That’s how it was. On the Earth. Before us. But how do we know? Henrik Svensen collects stones, studies them in a microscope looking for something that can…

Henrik Svensen collects stones, studies them in a microscope looking for something that can solve one of the biggest questions in science today: why did 95 percent of life on Earth at that time, disappear during the greatest mass extinction?

In his search for answers, Svensen meets academic celebrities’ and academic enemies, unpredictable Russians, South African farmers and an eager double. The events of the past are untangled, millions of years compressed into something tangible, something that could provide answers to what can happen with a planet that stands on the threshold of the Anthropocene, our own age.

Sample translation available.

Reviews

«…Svensen shares with us his moments of vulnerability while searching for answers – ranging from the intellectual confusion that comes from too many valid hypotheses to the physical misery of spending days in the field carsick and thousands of miles from home. But throughout the book, as a literal backdrop for the action, is a vision of nature: a view from a mountain top, a stone in your hand, a wall of rock that stands one meter in front of you. It is these fine descriptions of what the geologist sees as he works that allows the reader to fully taste the seduction of working outside, and learning to love the rocks that often mean so much but more often say so little.» Anne Hope Jahren, Nordic Journal of Science and Technology Studies.

Stein på stein

A planet in crisis. Travelling through climatic changes and mass extinctions of the past.

Contact agent

Even Råkil

Reviews