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Otherlands

A Journey Through Earth's Extinct Worlds

Audiobook
1 of 1 copy available
1 of 1 copy available
“Immersive . . . bracingly ambitious . . . rewinds the story of life on Earth—from the mammoth steppe of the last Ice Age to the dawn of multicellular creatures over 500 million years ago.”—The Economist

LONGLISTED FOR THE BAILLIE GIFFORD PRIZE • “One of those rare books that’s both deeply informative and daringly imaginative.”—Elizabeth Kolbert, author of Under a White Sky
ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: The New Yorker, Prospect (UK)
The past is past, but it does leave clues, and Thomas Halliday has used cutting-edge science to decipher them more completely than ever before. In Otherlands, Halliday makes sixteen fossil sites burst to life on the page.
This book is an exploration of the Earth as it used to exist, the changes that have occurred during its history, and the ways that life has found to adapt―or not. It takes us from the savannahs of Pliocene Kenya to watch a python chase a group of australopithecines into an acacia tree; to a cliff overlooking the salt pans of the empty basin of what will be the Mediterranean Sea just as water from the Miocene Atlantic Ocean spills in; into the tropical forests of Eocene Antarctica; and under the shallow pools of Ediacaran Australia, where we glimpse the first microbial life. 
Otherlands also offers us a vast perspective on the current state of the planet. The thought that something as vast as the Great Barrier Reef, for example, with all its vibrant diversity, might one day soon be gone sounds improbable. But the fossil record shows us that this sort of wholesale change is not only possible but has repeatedly happened throughout Earth history.
Even as he operates on this broad canvas, Halliday brings us up close to the intricate relationships that defined these lost worlds. In novelistic prose that belies the breadth of his research, he illustrates how ecosystems are formed; how species die out and are replaced; and how species migrate, adapt, and collaborate. It is a breathtaking achievement: a surprisingly emotional narrative about the persistence of life, the fragility of seemingly permanent ecosystems, and the scope of deep time, all of which have something to tell us about our current crisis.
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    • AudioFile Magazine
      With a velvety British voice, Adetomiwa Edun describes ecosystems as they may have been hundreds of millions of years ago. Listeners have the chance to get up close and personal with the Terrible Moon-Rat, the Akokan knobblehead, and other prehistoric animals and plants and learn how they may have interacted with their environments. Edun glides smoothly over the many scientific names and terms, never letting them disrupt the evocative pictures paleobiologist Halliday paints of ancient swamps, oceans, and grassy plains and their denizens. The final chapter addresses the climate changes we're facing now and how knowledge of the planet's past shifts between greenhouse world and "icehouse" world inform our situation today, and our future. J.M.D. © AudioFile 2022, Portland, Maine
    • Publisher's Weekly

      Starred review from January 24, 2022
      Evolutionary biologist Halliday takes an energizing spin through Earth’s past in his magnificent debut. Calling this “a naturalist’s travel book,” Halliday takes readers from the dry flatlands of Pleistocene Alaska, where “short willows write wordless calligraphy on the wind with flourished ink-brush catkins,” to the Ediacaran skies, more than 500 million years ago, when even the stars were different. Along the way, he introduces myriad strange organisms: there’s an enormous goose from Miocene-era Italy; Cretaceous China’s winged reptile; the squidlike Tully Monster of the Carboniferous seas; and the wormy Hallucigenia found in Cambrian water. Halliday concludes in the present, cautioning that “there is no corner of the Earth where have not touched the way of life of its inhabitants in some way” but also asserting that humanity can “find the routes that avert disaster” in the future. The prose is stunning, and the author packs the narrative with geological, meteorological, and biological insights, turning dry history into something fascinating; for instance, the glass sponge reefs of the Jurassic period are “the largest biological structures ever to have existed,” “three times the length of the Great Barrier Reef.” This show-stopping work deserves wide readership.

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  • OverDrive Listen audiobook

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  • English

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