The Greywacke: How a Priest, a Soldier and a School Teacher Uncovered 300 Million Years of History

Name: The Greywacke: How a Priest, a Soldier and a School Teacher Uncovered 300 Million Years of History
Author: Nick Davidson
ISBN: 9781782836261

Nick Davidson

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Nick Davidson

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#3344 of 3,809 books · #471 in Science & Technology

Shortlisted for the Royal Society Science Book Prize (2022).

The Greywacke was shortlisted for the Royal Society Science Prize 2022. Adam Sedgwick was a priest and scholar. Roderick Murchison was a retired soldier. Charles Lapworth was a schoolteacher. It was their personal and intellectual rivalry, pursued on treks through Wales, Scotland, Cornwall, Devon and parts of western Russia, that revealed the narrative structure of the Paleozoic Era, the 300-million-year period during which life on Earth became recognisably itself. Nick Davidson follows in their footsteps and draws on maps, diaries, letters, field notes and contemporary accounts to bring the ideas and characters alive. But this is more than a history of geology. As we travel through some of the most spectacular scenery in Britain, it's a celebration of the sheer visceral pleasure generations of geologists have found, and continue to find, in noticing the earth beneath our feet.

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