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Conducting science and publishing research results in renowned international journals is one thing. Communicating scientific findings to a broad public is another. Some can do both. Mathias Harzhauser, paleontologist and department director at the Natural History Museum in Vienna, belongs to this rare species. “Each of us should be able to explain what we do to our grandmother in an understandable way,” is one of Mathias’ mottos, with whom I have written several books, most recently “Wien am Sand”. A butcher or a hairdresser will have fewer difficulties than a paleontologist. The very word of this rare profession requires explanation. Translating it as dinosaur researcher would only be a partial aspect, albeit one that would make children's eyes light up.
What is the development of planet Earth? How did life come about? And what about the small and large catastrophes over all these millions of years? Who understands that? How should you explain that? What's behind it? “System Change” is a well-chosen title for the bay. The catchy subtitle "A story about sex, fire and the tipping points of life" arouses interest and makes you curious about what the 167 pages have to offer.
Even if chapter titles like “Catastrophic Prelude”, “The Dirty Solution as a Model for Success” or “The Big Blubb!” If it sounds quite lurid, you should always keep the memento from Katrin Vohland, general director and scientific manager of the museum, within your mental reach: "This book makes you humble, humbled by the enormous mass shifts, by the unimaginably long periods of time, by the infinitely many and still largely unrecognized life forms deep in the rocks." (Foreword; page 5).
Mathias sees his latest book as a “loose collection of essays” that “illuminate some aspects of the evolution of life.” This reveals “unexpected connections between seemingly unrelated events” (page 8f). He is concerned with “the extrinsic factors that have influenced evolution.” Specifically: plate tectonics, asteroid impacts or global climate changes. The fact that he switches back and forth between geology, biology and chemistry brings with it the topic. If words like enzyme, troposphere or sulfide are foreign to you, Mathias advises you to "quickly google such terms on your cell phone." (page 9).
The beginning marks a core topic in earth sciences, time. Starting on page 10 it's about "'Deep Time' - the 'deep time' that encompasses the incomprehensible dimensions of the earth's history." Starting from antiquity (Xenophanes), it was theologians such as Archbishop James Ussher (1581-1656) and John Lightfoot (1602-1675) who, based on the genealogies mentioned in the Bible, set the time of creation as October 23rd in the year 4004 BC. (page 10). Later, researchers such as Edmond Halley (1656–1742), the namesake of Halley's Comet, or the British geologist Thomas Mellard Reade (1832–1909) tried to calculate the age of the Earth based on the chloride concentration in the oceans.
The result, 200 million years, was – compared to the biblical theses – a big step in the right direction. The breakthrough was made by Ernest Rutherford (1871–1937), who saw the newly discovered radioactivity as a way to date rocks (page 15). In 1913, Arthur Holmes (1890–1965) described a gneiss that was 1.5 billion years old in his book "The Age of the Earth" and ventured far ahead. In 1946 he assumed the age of the Earth to be around three billion years. Ten years later, the American geochemist Clair Cameron Patterson (1922–1995) determined the age of a meteorite to be 4.55 billion years. Since the age of the meteorite is equated with the age of the Earth, it hit the age, which today is 4,567 million years (beginning of the Hadean) almost exactly (page 16).
When it comes to the question of the geological future, to which the last chapter is dedicated, one can say, taking plate tectonics into account: "In around 250 million years, a new large continent will emerge: Pangea-Ultima." (page 142).
When it comes to hard facts, objects related to the book mentioned above, we recommend not only - but above all - Room 6 in the Natural History Museum in Vienna, the historic Imperial Hall. The name comes from the fact that six of the seven oil paintings on the walls show places that were named after Emperor Franz Joseph.
The book "The Earth - A Dynamic Planet" by Mathias Harzhauser, who is also responsible for the conception of the exhibition, and Agnes Mayr is referred to in the subtitle as "Guide to the geological-palaeontological display collection in Room 6". If you expected a list of every object including an inventory number, you would be disappointed. The author duo says: "Instead of presenting a classification of rocks, the exhibition illuminates the diverse relationships between the lithosphere and the biosphere." The book with its 14 chapters is seen as an independent publication that also works without the objects on display. The recipe for success: short, understandable texts, impressive images (some in large format) in an attractive layout with topics that are hardly known: "The range extends from the structure of the earth to the Anthropocene - the age in which humans began to emerge as a geological force." (page 4).
Take a quick look at the table of contents. “A Dynamic Planet” (page 4) marks the beginning, followed by “The Spheres of the Earth” (page 6), before “The Dynamic Planet” (page 8). “The Structure of the Earth” (page 13) deals with the earth's crust, mantle and core. It's exciting from page 22 ("Geological Revolutions of Life"). Here you can find out: "One of his most important 'inventions' is photosynthesis. It has been working for 3.4 billion years." Did you know that without oxygen there would be neither the brown of the ground nor the yellow of the desert? But “It could have turned out completely differently” (page 25). This is where the globally unique fossils of the Gabonionta come into play, multicellular organisms that appeared 2.1 billion years ago but became extinct again due to a decrease in oxygen in the atmosphere. Worth seeing in this context are fictional forms of living creatures (page 26f), which were designed by the Design Investigations class at the University of Applied Arts Vienna, under the assumption that the Gabonionta were not extinct. True to the motto: What if, or if not. This is followed by topics such as "Life as a geological force" (page 28), which deals with gas hydrates as carbon stores and manganese nodules on the ocean floor, and "Rocks as climate archives" (page 33) with the temperature profile of the last 65 million of the planet.
Conclusion: The "System Change - A story about sex, fire and the tipping points of life" is a well-researched, well-read collection of topics based on peer-reviewed publications that illuminate little-known aspects of the earth's highly eventful history. "The Earth - A Dynamic Planet", designed as a guide through a museum display room, is an understandable "best of" short texts and impressive images on the development of the Blue Planet. (Thomas Hofmann, September 5, 2025)