Otherlands: A World in the Making - A Sunday Times bestseller

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Very shortly after starting to read this I thought to myself, "This is earth science for lit fic fans."

Prereqs to read it: he intends none other than a basic science education -- but I think you will get more from the book if you had a class in Historical Geology in college, or are well-read. Book review: Otherlands: A World In The Making, by Thomas Halliday". www.scotsman.com. 2022-02-09 . Retrieved 2022-08-28. In a long and heartfelt epilogue, Halliday looks at the current ongoing extinction event and the course of climate change. Though the world has been much warmer in the past, he is wary of taking comfort in the comparison, since we are now carbonising the world at a rate which is, even in geological terms, completely unprecedented. At the same time, he warns, ‘we must not become despondent’. Cynicism and despair solve nothing, the choice is not between death or salvation, and everything that can be done to reduce the impact, flatten the curve, and slow the inevitable is important: ultimately, he maintains, the disaster ‘is something we can manage’ with the right personal and policy choices. Freilich kann man gerade das auch als Vorteil ansehen. Während frühere "Realienbücher" in Großvaters Schrank auf bunten Tafeln präsentierten, was es alles so gab und wer oder was wann lebte, strebt Halliday danach, die Beziehungen der Lebewesen untereinander und innerhalb ihrer Mitwelt darzustelle

A bracing pleasure for Earth-science buffs and readers interested in diving into deep history." [5] One thing is certain; whether those that we observe are among them or not, there are beings in the Ediacaran seas that are starting out on the long walk – our long walk – to now." A sweeping, lyrical biography of Earth – the geology, the biology, the extinctions and the ever-shifting ecology that defines our living planet" Glaser, Joe (June 5, 2022). "Book review: 'Otherlands' ". Bowling Green Daily News . Retrieved 2022-08-28. Here are a few passages to give you a feel for the content: By the time the mammoth steppe finally came to an end, when Wrangel’s mammoths glinted on cliffs overlooking the flooded plains of Beringia, the Great Pyramid of Giza and the Norte Chico in Peru had already existed for generations, and the civilizations of the Indus Vally were centuries old.

Halliday immerses us in a series of ancient landscapes, from the mammoth steppe in Ice Age Alaska to the lush rainforests of Eocene Antarctica, with its colonies of giant penguins, to Ediacaran Australia, where the moon is far brighter than ours today. We visit the birthplace of humanity; we hear the crashing of the highest waterfall the Earth has ever known; and we watch as life emerges again after the asteroid hits, and the age of the mammal dawns. These lost worlds seem fantastical and yet every description – whether the colour of a beetle’s shell, the rhythm of pterosaurs in flight or the lingering smell of sulphur in the air – is grounded in the fossil record. OUR planet has existed for some 4.5 billion years In that time, it has undergone extraordinary changes, with landscapes and life forms that would seem almost alien to us today. Yet clues to their existence and fate can be found buried deep within Earth’s layers. Otherlands review: A fascinating journey through Earth's history". New Scientist. January 19, 2022. As far as images, you get exactly two per chapter: one a map of the globe showing the relative positions of landmasses and seas during that time, and one pencil image of a life form from that era. I deeply appreciated both (especially the maps) but I wanted so, so much more!

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This is a piece of nature writing that covers millions of years, from the very start of evolution, while capturing the almost unthinkable ways geography has shifted and changed over time. Epic in scope and executed with charming enthusiasm, Otherlands looks set to be a big talking point for fans of non-fiction in 2022 ‘The 15 New Novels And Non-Fiction Books To Read In 2022’ ― Mr Porter Award-winning young palaeobiologist Thomas Halliday immerses us in a series of ancient landscapes, from the mammoth steppe in Ice Age Alaska to the lush rainforests of Eocene Antarctica, with its colonies of giant penguins, to Ediacaran Australia, where the moon is far brighter than ours today. We visit the birthplace of humanity; we hear the crashing of the highest waterfall the Earth has ever known; and we watch as life emerges again after the asteroid hits, and the age of the mammal dawns. Halliday is excellent at showing the ways in which these unimaginably remote environments connect with life today. There is a theory that the first cells developed by natural chemical reactions around deep-sea alkaline vents, which can produce tiny fatty droplets which lead to the concentration of a compound called pyrophosphate. This is still the chemical reaction that cells use today, in the form of ATP, and which drives every living thing on earth. ‘To perform any action,’ Halliday says, ‘from firing nerves to secreting saliva, from contracting a muscle to DNA replication, every cell within the body must first replicate some of the chemistry of the earth bleeding into the sea’ some four billion years ago. That there was an eruption in the Arctic some 250 million years ago, when most of the world's land masses were part of a single massive continent, " a blast unlike any other... 4 million cubic kilometres of lava – enough to fill the modern-day Mediterranean Sea – which will flood an area the size of Australia. That eruption will tear through recently formed coal beds, turning the Earth into a candle, and drifting coal ash and toxic metals over the land, transforming watercourses into deadly slurries. Oxygen will boil from the oceans; bacteria will bloom and produce poisonous hydrogen sulphide. The foul-smelling sulphides will infuse the seas and skies. Ninety-five per cent of all species on Earth will perish in what will become known as the Great Dying."