Laura Poppick on Her 3 Greatest Revelations While Writing Strata

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Fire may seem as inherent in this planet as the earth, wind and water. But by writing DiapersI learned that the flames were almost absent here for more than 90% of the existence of the earth.

I had this revelation by looking for the rise of oxygen in the atmosphere about 2.4 billion years ago – half -past 4.54 billion years of the earth. I was interested in the arrival of this gas mainly for the way in which he influenced life and how it made possible all the biological complexity that we live today (including, of course, ourselves).

Humans have not understood the origins of the landscapes that we live in the past six decades.

It was only once I started to try to place myself at the geological moment of the ascent of oxygen, and to imagine what the pre-oxygen days could have looked like and looked like, I realized that an oxygen-free land should also be free from flames. I started to dig into the geological history of fire and to be linked to Ian Glasspool, a paleobotanist at the Colby College who studies the oldest evidence of a forest fire on earth. He confirmed that the fire would have been practically absent here until enough oxygen accumulated in the atmosphere to support combustion, and enough ignition germinated on continents to maintain a flame. It would not have happened before the plants started to spread on earth, about 458 million years ago. Lightning blows may have ignited a microbial carpet here and there before this time, but these first flames would have been small and short-lived.

When the conditions finally moved to support supported forest fires, this new planetary element has made its way through the carbon cycle and has become inextricably linked to the world climate. Glasspool turns to the rock record to try to understand how past periods of climate change influenced the old forest models, in the hope of better clarifying the predictions of future fiery modes in a warming world.

I grew up in the 1990s, at a time when scientists had a basic understanding of how the mountains are formed, why volcanoes burst where they do and how the tectonic plates shape these fundamental characteristics of our planet. For most of my life, I considered all this as rudimentary knowledge that must go back many generations. But by writing DiapersI realized that my own parents – born in the mid -1950s – were not raised in a world with this same understanding of the earth. Scientists do not agree on the theory of plates tectonics before the 1960s. It was not until that time that they could start understanding the inner and external functioning of the earth and giving meaning to the basic elements of the mountains, volcanoes and all the other physical characteristics that include the world in which we live.

I immersed myself in deep time transformed the most banal daily activities.

Humans have existed for some 300,000 years but understand only the origins of the landscapes that we have lived in for six decades.

Any scientific field can trigger fear and wonder, but I have found that the history of the earth can go further by offering a deep source of comfort and earth. This comfort that I find in The Rock Record inspired me to write Diapers, But I was surprised to note that it was not a flat line or to become out of the years of writing of the book; It has become deeper and deeper. When I mentioned this with the researchers I interviewed, I often found that they felt in the same way, and were attracted by their work for this same reason – for the way it changed their way of seeing and living their daily life.

I immerse myself in deep time and see the world through a geological lens has transformed my way of living even my most banal daily activities. When I disassemble my garden or make my dog for a walk, I will remember in a flash that the grass and the trees did not grow on earth for most of the existence of this planet. I will remember how new this is – the legs riding on a road, the branches sniffing the nose, the beating hearts. I will remember everything that should happen to make it all possible – the emergence of oxygen in the atmosphere, the much later evolution of plants and animals – and I will have a renewed sense of fear and gratitude that we must be here.

Read an extract from Laura Poppick’s new book, Strata: depth stories, here.

Image of lead: Ad Gr / Shutterstock

• Laura Poppick

  Published on July 15, 2025

  Laura Poppick is a scientific and environmental journalist whose stories appeared in the New York Times, Scientific American, National Geographic, And elsewhere. It was listed as a finalist of the National Association of Science Writers Science in Society Journalism Award and Maine Literary Awards. His first book, Strata: depth storiesprovides a context for modern environmental change by exploring four other moments of global transformation in the deep geological history of the earth. She lives in Portland, Maine.