{"id":231627,"date":"2025-02-04T14:33:49","date_gmt":"2025-02-04T14:33:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/2025\/02\/04\/a-new-book-explores-the-evolutionary-romance-between-plants-and-animals\/"},"modified":"2025-02-04T14:33:49","modified_gmt":"2025-02-04T14:33:49","slug":"a-new-book-explores-the-evolutionary-romance-between-plants-and-animals","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/2025\/02\/04\/a-new-book-explores-the-evolutionary-romance-between-plants-and-animals\/","title":{"rendered":"A new book explores the evolutionary romance between plants and animals"},"content":{"rendered":"<div style=\"text-align:center\"><\/div> \r\n<br><div data-component=\"video-embed\">\n\t\t\t\t\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image  has-alignleft\">\n<figure class=\"alignleft size-full is-resized\"><a class=\"https:\/\/bookshop.org\/p\/books\/when-the-earth-was-green-plants-animals-and-evolution-s-greatest-romance-riley-black\/21356911?ean=9781250288998&amp;next=t&amp;next=t\" href=\"https:\/\/bookshop.org\/a\/21798\/9781250288998\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\"><\/a><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/bookshop.org\/p\/books\/when-the-earth-was-green-plants-animals-and-evolution-s-greatest-romance-riley-black\/21356911?ean=9781250288998&amp;next=t&amp;next=t\" data-type=\"link\" data-id=\"https:\/\/bookshop.org\/p\/books\/when-the-earth-was-green-plants-animals-and-evolution-s-greatest-romance-riley-black\/21356911?ean=9781250288998&amp;next=t&amp;next=t\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">When the Earth Was Green<\/a><br\/><em>Riley Black<br\/>St. Martin\u2019s Press, $29<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Imagine being a paleontologist exploring Utah\u2019s Jurassic-aged rocks. Imagine discovering the bones of a 20-meter-long, 20-ton herbivorous dinosaur. Then consider: How could any beast become so big? The answer, according to science writer and paleontologist Riley Black, lies in plants.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Black narrates the story of this Jurassic saurian in a chapter of her latest book, <em>When the Earth Was Green<\/em>. The imagined <em>Apatosaurus<\/em> lumbers through lush cycads, ferns and conifers, vacuuming plant matter into her digestive system of \u201cenormous fermentation vats,\u201d which allows her to extract maximal nutrients. The abundance of verdant foliage available for the adult <em>Apatosaurus<\/em> to inhale drove its species\u2019s gigantic size. Black even conjures the green pats of dung produced by the (probably) gassy animal as it farts along.<\/p>\n\n\n<aside class=\"sn-conversion rich-text rich-text--with-sidebar\">\n<style><![CDATA[\n.email-conversion {\n  border: 1px solid #ffcccb;\n  color: white;\n  margin-top: 50px;\n  background-image: url(\"\/wp-content\/themes\/sciencenews\/client\/src\/images\/cta-module@2x.jpg\");\n  padding: 20px;\n  clear: both;\n}\n\n]]><\/style>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"rich-text embedded-conversion-content is-layout-flow wp-block-group-is-layout-flow\">\n<a href=\"https:\/\/www.sciencenews.org\/article\/deep-end-podcast-trailer?cta=top\">\n  <img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.sciencenews.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/02\/MAR_014_25_A_598X336_option2_V02.png\" id=\"dynamic-conversion\"\/><\/a><\/div><a href=\"https:\/\/www.sciencenews.org\/article\/deep-end-podcast-trailer?cta=top\">\n<\/a>\n\n<style><![CDATA[\n#dynamic-conversion {\n  border: 1px solid #ffcccb;\n  max-width: 100%;\n  height: auto;\n  clear: both;\n}\n]]><\/style>\n\n\n\n\n<\/aside>\n\n\n<p>With a focus firmly on plants, Black masterfully uses science to breathe life into ancient worlds in which some of our favorite prehistoric animals lived. Each chapter \u2014 written as a vignette with its own appendix explaining the science behind Black\u2019s story choices \u2014 portrays a particular time and place.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Take the first chapter, set in Arctic Canada 1.2 billion years ago. This is a world of no forests, no fish, no seashells. Bare rock studded with snowcapped mountains presided over sediment-filled oceans stocked with mats of cyanobacteria and other mostly unicellular organisms. Against this backdrop, Black describes something that\u2019s not quite plant. It\u2019s a multicellular, photosynthesizing red alga. \u201cIt\u2019s only in this moment that what were once single cells are beginning to combine and coalesce into new and unexpected arrangements,\u201d she writes. We wouldn\u2019t be here without this evolutionary step.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>This red alga and its photosynthetic brethren are ancestors of the first plants that crept onto land, inadvertently luring critters out of the ocean. \u201cIt was the plants, not fleshy-finned fish, that changed the world when they came ashore,\u201d Black writes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Paleontology is often framed as stories of colonization and conquest \u2014 life colonized land, dinosaurs dominated the Mesozoic Era. Black rejects this framework, instead twining tales of communities into an \u201cevolutionary romance.\u201d She reminds us that \u201cwe did not arrive here on our own, but as part of an ongoing relationship with the botanical.\u201d By itself, a dinosaur is just a dinosaur. Farting sauropods dining at the salad bars of Jurassic forests, warming the planet with their methane-rich malodors, is something else entirely.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity\"\/>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Buy<\/em>\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/bookshop.org\/a\/21798\/9781250288998\" data-type=\"link\" data-id=\"https:\/\/bookshop.org\/p\/books\/when-the-earth-was-green-plants-animals-and-evolution-s-greatest-romance-riley-black\/21356911?ean=9781250288998&amp;next=t&amp;next=t\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">When the Earth Was Green<\/a> <em>from Bookshop.org.\u00a0<\/em>Science News<em>\u00a0is a Bookshop.org affiliate and will earn a commission on purchases made from links in this article.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\t\t\t<\/div>\r\n<br>\r\n<br><a href=\"https:\/\/www.sciencenews.org\/article\/book-review-evolution-plants-animals\">Source link <\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>When the Earth Was GreenRiley BlackSt. Martin\u2019s Press, $29 Imagine being a paleontologist exploring Utah\u2019s Jurassic-aged rocks. Imagine discovering the bones of a 20-meter-long, 20-ton herbivorous dinosaur. Then consider: How could any beast become so big? The answer, according to science writer and paleontologist Riley Black, lies in plants. Black narrates the story of this [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":231628,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.sciencenews.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/01\/when-the-earth-was-green.jpg?fit=1650%2C2550&ssl=1","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[606],"tags":[1087,10613,10102,3105,219,46904],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/231627"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=231627"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/231627\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":231629,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/231627\/revisions\/231629"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/231628"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=231627"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=231627"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=231627"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}