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Discovering the Strangest Life on Earth
by Karen G. Lloyd
A biologist's firsthand account of the hunt for life beneath earth's surface—and how new discoveries are challenging our most basic assumptions about the nature of life on Earth.
Life thrives in the deepest, darkest recesses of Earth's crust—from methane seeps in the ocean floor to the highest reaches of Arctic permafrost—and it is unlike anything seen on the surface. Intraterrestrials shares what scientists are learning about these strange types of microbial life—and how research expeditions to some of the most extreme locales on the planet are broadening our understanding of what life is and how its earliest forms may have evolved.
Drawing on her experiences and those of her fellow scientists working in challenging and often dangerous conditions, Karen Lloyd takes readers on an adventure from the bottom of the ocean through the jungles of Central America to the high-altitude volcanoes of the Andes. Only discovered in recent decades, "intraterrestrials"—subsurface beings that are truly alien—are demonstrating how life can exist in boiling water, pure acid, and bleach. They enable us to peer back to the very dawn of life on Earth, disclosing deep branches on the tree of life that push the limits of what we thought possible. Some can "breathe" rocks or even electrons. Others may live for hundreds of thousands of years or longer. All of them are living in ways that are totally foreign to us surface dwellers.
Blending captivating storytelling with the latest science, Intraterrestrials reveals what microbes in Earth's deep subsurface biosphere can tell us about the prospects for finding life on other planets—and the future of life on our own.
"Lloyd is one of those rare gifted writers who can be as broadly profound as she is precise, able to make science both come raucously alive and resonate with meaning. She does this via perfect metaphors, an effortless wit, and a massively infectious enthusiasm for the outsize significance of her very small subjects." ―Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
"Lloyd, an environmental studies professor at the University of Southern California, debuts with an astonishing study of the remarkable microorganisms that thrive in the 'subsurface biosphere.'...Filled with mind-blowing trivia that will change how readers think about life on Earth, this captivates." ―Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"Written by a confident scientist and storyteller, this book encourages readers to look inward, deep beneath surfaces, to journey with her into the earth and beyond it." —Library Journal
"Intraterrestrials is an astonishing, exhilarating, mind-bending journey into the hidden living world deep beneath our planet's sunlit surface. Lloyd is a master storyteller and unrivaled expert in sharing the thrills and challenges of diving to the ocean floor, sampling near active volcanoes, and dodging polar bears on rapidly thawing permafrost. Read this book and prepare to enter a living realm beyond your wildest imagination." —Robert M. Hazen, author of The Story of Earth
"Forget Ewoks, tribbles, and Daleks. Fictional extraterrestrials seem quite ordinary compared with the truly bizarre organisms living beneath our feet: microbes that thrive in physical and chemical extremes, 'breathe' rocks—and outlive humans. Karen Lloyd's Intraterrestrials will forever change your understanding of what it means to be alive on Earth." —Marcia Bjornerud, author of Timefulness and Turning to Stone
This information about Intraterrestrials was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Karen G. Lloyd is the Wrigley Chair in Environmental Studies and Professor of Earth Sciences at the University of Southern California. Her work has appeared in leading publications such as Nature and Science.
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