On the Origin of Soils

Over the past 500 million years, life beneath our feet has quietly engineered the living skin of the Earth. This book tells the remarkable evolutionary story of soil, revealing how bacteria, protists, viruses and other microscopic organisms collaborate with fungi, plant roots and soil animals to create the diverse soil structures we depend upon today. Far from emerging in a single moment, soil processes evolved gradually, shaping – and reshaping – each other over deep time.

Uniquely, …