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From the author-illustrator of The California Field Atlas, the story of California since the beginning of life on Earth.
The Origins of California is a biography of the Golden State—a story that spans billions of years, dramatic upheavals, and the strangest and most wondrous lifeforms imaginable. Dinosaurs and prehistoric birds wander through these pages, as do ancient trees and ferns, tectonic plates, and islands and lakes long since transformed.
Obi Kaufmann's sumptuous illustrations and evocative text offer an invitation to ages long past, a way to imagine and explore the astonishingly dynamic ecosystems that preceded modern life. As the book approaches the current day, Kaufmann considers the fundamental roles that Indigenous peoples have played in shaping California's ecology, and he looks unsparingly at the enormous costs of colonial and corporate extraction. This journey asks how the lessons of deep time might help us confront the ecological crises we face now.
Inaugurating a trilogy that will explore California's past, present, and possible futures, The Origins of California is a grand adventure through time, and a new way to fall in love with one of the most biodiverse places on Earth.
Obi Kaufmann is the author of The California Field Atlas (2017, #1 San Francisco Chronicle Best Seller), The State of Water (2019), The Forests of California (2020), The Coasts of California (2022), The Deserts of California (2023), The State of Fire (2024), and California Inside Out (2026), all published by Heyday. When he is not backpacking, you can find the painter-poet at home in the East Bay, posting trail paintings at his handle @coyotethunder on Instagram. His speaking tour dates are available at californiafieldatlas.com, and his essays are posted at coyoteandthunder.com.
ABRIDGED TABLE OF CONTENTS
Introduction
1. Before the Beginning; California and the Birth of the Biosphere
- The Crystalline Basement: The Western United States in the Proterozoic Era
- The Basis of Marine Life
- Shells and Back Bones
- The Rise and Significance of the Seashell
- Protecting what Remains
2. Life in the Ancient Tides; The Paleozoic Origins of California’s Coastal Ecology
- Islands in an Extinct Sea
- The Invention of Anatomy; Fish evolution in the Devonian
- Ancient Patterns, New Forms
- Where the Fresh and Saltwaters Mix
- Fighting the Rising Tide of the Anthropocene
3. The First Forests; Soil, Seeds and Insects in Paleo-California
- Islands off Pangaea’s Western Shore
- Biological Dark Matter
- Roots, Wood and Seed
- The Insect Blueprint for Survival
- Where and Which Insects Persist
4. Life After the Great Dying; Mesozoic Ecology in California
- The Land Comes into Being
- Bookended by Mass Extinctions
- When Mammals Became a Thing
- The Value of Indicator Species: The evolution and biodiversity of California Amphibians
- The Reptilian Age
- California’s Lost World: Walking with Dinosaurs in Laramidia
- Evidence of Mesozoic life
- Seeing the Forest Through the Trees
- The First Flower to Bloom in California
- Tending Mesozoic Gardens: Diversity and specialization in California’s native bees
- Pollination, Predation, and Parasitism
5. Recognizable Forms of Life in the Age of Mammals; Welcome to the Cenozoic
- From Greenhouse to Icehouse
- The Ages of Ancient Mammals: North American Land Mammal Ages
- Surviving with Dinosaurs
- Enter the Age of Mammals
- A Network of Kin: Modern mammalian distribution and diversity
- Feeding the Land from the Sea: California salmonid evolution and ecology
- The Day Dinosaurs Flew
- Rewriting the Botanical Playbook: How grass evolved and dominated Precolonial California
- Fire, Fungi and Foraging Friends
6. Anthropic Ecology: California in the Age of Humanity
- A Land Not Like Now: California at the end of the Last Glacial Maximum
- The End of the Time of the Giants: The Holocene extinctions of California
- Between Flood and Drought, Fire and Ice: California Holocene Climate trends
- How Things Were Then and Now
- Of Salmon, Tall Trees and Regular Fire
- Of Volcanoes, Prairies and the Cold-Desert
- Of Oaks, Condors and Mosaic Habitats
- Of Granite and Ice, Flood and Fecundity
- Of Playas, Salt Flats, and Volcanic Hydrology
- Of Ancient Connectivity, Fire and Lots of People
- Outcompeting Indigeneity: Invasion ecology, colonization, and how everything changes
- There will be Blood: The resource landscape of the early California state
- The Coevolution of Fire, Food and Fecundity
- Water Then, Water Now
What California means: An Afterword by the Author