Price: 45,99 EUR

Authors: Bogdan Jurkovšek, Barbara Jurkovšek

Year of publication: 2025, 29,7 x 21,0 cm, 160 pages

ISBN 978-961-261-752-3

Publisher: Didakta and GeoZS

Earth, one of the eight planets in the Solar System, was initially a large sphere formed from compacted cosmogenic material. Due to compression, meteors, and the decay of radioactive elements, it became increasingly hot and eventually melted. Once it had cooled sufficiently, around 4.4 billion years ago, the first traces of a solid rocky crust began to form, and from the gases released by the cooling rocks, the planet’s primordial atmosphere emerged. Only when water vapour began to condense, after millions of years of continuous rainfall and the formation of oceans, were the conditions created for the emergence of the earliest and simplest life forms. Living beings began to develop and diversify, and over the next three billion years gradually populated the entire Earth. Under favourable conditions, life flourished with thousands of new species; at times, due to worsening environmental conditions, it almost became extinct. Yet it always recovered over time and re-established itself on new foundations.

The book presents reconstructions of past environments and fossils from geological periods that are represented in Slovenia. It is intended for anyone interested in life on Earth before humans appeared, and encourages reflection on what we can learn from this distant past for our future behaviour.