Frozen in Time is the story of paleontologist Natalia Rybczynski, once a rising star in her field, who was stopped in her tracks by a traumatic brain injury. In the first decade of her career, she made a series of groundbreaking discoveries from her fieldwork in the remote High Arctic, uncovering a rich forest world full of surprising creatures that thrived before the Ice Age. Her findings included the land-walking ancestor of seals, the first appearance of dam-building beavers, and the evolutionary origins of desert camels in Arctic snows, raising questions about this lost world and its legacy.

After her injury left her struggling with basic tasks like reading, writing, and walking, these questions seemed unsolvable. However, over time, Natalia carved out moments of lucidity and developed a novel theory: the ancient boreal forests of the Arctic were a paleontological Garden of Eden, nurturing the plants and animals that would give rise to the living world we recognize today.