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4.04 AVERAGE
4.04 AVERAGE
hopeful
informative
inspiring
relaxing
slow-paced
Did you know that "regurgitalite" is the word for fossilized vomit? Now you're stuck with that information! Also, if you need some nightmare fuel, think about the fact there was once a species of crocodilian that could be described as "agile and catlike".
If I wanted to retain anything from this at all, I should have gone for the print version instead of the audiobook. I find it almost impossible to really pay attention to the details in meandering descriptions of landscapes and species and ecosystems. But I have no regrets, because Adetomiwa Edun's voice is incredibly soothing.
If I wanted to retain anything from this at all, I should have gone for the print version instead of the audiobook. I find it almost impossible to really pay attention to the details in meandering descriptions of landscapes and species and ecosystems. But I have no regrets, because Adetomiwa Edun's voice is incredibly soothing.
informative
inspiring
reflective
slow-paced
adventurous
challenging
informative
reflective
medium-paced
Great narration. Sometimes the Latin names all blur into one and it’s hard to keep up, but the pictures painted of the various prehistoric eras are vivid and fascinating.
adventurous
challenging
informative
reflective
medium-paced
This is without doubt the most exhilarating and beautiful (!) piece of non-fiction I have ever read so far in my life 😍 What an incredible journey back in time, that made me shudder and lose my breath so many times!
One of MANY examples of beautiful imagery and lyrical prose:
“In the early winter skies above Seymour Island, the sun sets for the last time for three months to come. On the edge of the Antarctic winds, the birds wheel through the night, navigating perhaps by the bright stars, or the magnetic fields swirling from iron deep in the Earth. The sky seems to rotate around the South Pole, as the constellation steers through the sky, and the tilted Earth rolls through its seasons. Below, wakeful under the stars, thunderbirds and lightning beasts crackle over the newly frosted ground.”
Example of dipping into philosophy and challenging the reader about frameworks of thoughts:
“There is no such thing as a fixed ideal for an environment, no reef onto which nostalgia can anchor. The human imposition of borders on the world inevitably changes our perception of what ‘belongs’ where, but to look into deep time is to see only an ever-changing list of inhabitants of one ecosystem or another. That is not to say that native species do not exist, only that the concept of native that we so easily tie to a sense of place also applies to time.”
Another example of the reflective nature of this book, here on (humanity’s, but also everything else's) impermanence on the planet:
“This is now undoubtedly a human planet. It has not always been, and perhaps will not always be. […] The world as it is today is a direct result – not a conclusion or denouement, but a result – of what has gone before.”
I listened to a borrowed copy of the audiobook and loved it so much that I WILL buy the physical version. I want to say that I do not think this book is perfect – there are certain aspects I can criticize – but honestly, this was so lovely that it still gets a solid 5/5 stars from me ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Thomas Halliday is a popular science genius and I will read anything he writes in the future 😍
One of MANY examples of beautiful imagery and lyrical prose:
“In the early winter skies above Seymour Island, the sun sets for the last time for three months to come. On the edge of the Antarctic winds, the birds wheel through the night, navigating perhaps by the bright stars, or the magnetic fields swirling from iron deep in the Earth. The sky seems to rotate around the South Pole, as the constellation steers through the sky, and the tilted Earth rolls through its seasons. Below, wakeful under the stars, thunderbirds and lightning beasts crackle over the newly frosted ground.”
Example of dipping into philosophy and challenging the reader about frameworks of thoughts:
“There is no such thing as a fixed ideal for an environment, no reef onto which nostalgia can anchor. The human imposition of borders on the world inevitably changes our perception of what ‘belongs’ where, but to look into deep time is to see only an ever-changing list of inhabitants of one ecosystem or another. That is not to say that native species do not exist, only that the concept of native that we so easily tie to a sense of place also applies to time.”
Another example of the reflective nature of this book, here on (humanity’s, but also everything else's) impermanence on the planet:
“This is now undoubtedly a human planet. It has not always been, and perhaps will not always be. […] The world as it is today is a direct result – not a conclusion or denouement, but a result – of what has gone before.”
I listened to a borrowed copy of the audiobook and loved it so much that I WILL buy the physical version. I want to say that I do not think this book is perfect – there are certain aspects I can criticize – but honestly, this was so lovely that it still gets a solid 5/5 stars from me ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Thomas Halliday is a popular science genius and I will read anything he writes in the future 😍
‘Otherlands: A Journey Through Earth’s Extinct Worlds’ by Thomas Halliday is wonderfully descriptive! I forgot he was describing places that no longer exist in our time! Instead, I wondered if there were tour packages…
Kidding! But it is beautifully written. I highly recommend this comprehensive ‘travelogue’ based on recent science discoveries. It is incredible what scientists are able to suss out from bones and old rocks and sediment.
I have copied the book blurb:
”“A kaleidoscopic and evocative journey into deep time” (Andrea Wulf, author of The Invention of Nature), from the Ice Age to the first appearance of microbial life 550 million years ago, by a brilliant young paleobiologist.
“This is as close to time travel as you are likely to get.”—Bill McKibben, author of Falter: Has the Human Game Begun to Play Itself Out?
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.”
The book is everything the blurb says and more. He describes flora and fauna from the different geological eras as if he were a National Geographic explorer watching the animals walking about and eating or hunting in forests or deserts, or as if he was scuba diving observing the critters in the ocean, before his eyes. He describes the plants that populate in whatever era in which he is doing a walkabout. I found myself wishing there had been a photographs and videos to go along with the text, but alas. There are also science explanations of how scientists know what flora and fauna was growing or was alive during the era he describes. He describes how the earth itself looked geologically, what the air was like, what the ocean was like, what the temperatures were, what geological forces were acting on the environment of that time. Explanations and descriptions are written so that they are easily understood by any reader.
Each chapter begins with an illustration of the position of the continents as they originally were during the epoch he so vividly ‘sees’. He begins with the Pleistocene Epoch in the Quaternary Period, Cenozoic Era, and moves backwards in Time with each chapter until he finishes with the Ediacaran Period in the Neoproterozoic Era - about when in Time the discoveries of the earliest fossils on Earth are, the cyanobacteria. I recommend an app, Geotimescale, which helped me visually as the author moves backwards in each chapter.
Astonishingly, what most shocked me, quote: ”We can predict what global climates should look like by comparing our atmosphere with those of the past. The atmosphere today has a composition similar to that of the Oligocene, that transitional phase between greenhouse and icehouse. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change —or IPCC—projects that within the lifetimes of children already born, we will reach—under currently implemented plans—levels of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere not seen since the Eocene [Epoch]. If we reach that atmospheric composition, we will also eventually reach Eocene temperatures.”
The Oligocene Epoch is described in chapter 4, “Homeland: Tinguiririca, Chile”, 32 million years ago. From the chapter: ”Throughout its history, the world has flipped between two stable states, an ‘icehouse’, when there is permanent ice at the poles, and a ‘greenhouse’, where that ice is absent.” Each flip of the Earth’s environment has caused extinctions, and then new forms of life take over.
And: ”When we compare our world with that of the end-Permian, we can find some worrying similarities. The oxygen loss from the oceans is not restricted to the past. It is happening today. Between 1998 and 2013 the oxygen concentration in the California Current, the major oceanic current running southwards on the west coast of North America, declined by 40 per cent. Globally, since the 1950’s, the area of low-oxygen bottom waters has expanded eight-fold, to 32 million square kilometers in 2018–twice the area of Russia—with more than a gigaton of oxygen lost from the ocean every single year for the last half-century. This is partially because algal blooms are more regularly sparked by runoff of nitrogen from agriculture, but also because the sea is becoming warmer, just as in the end-Permian.” [253 million years ago]
“Warmer seas cause a three-pronged problem for aerobic species. The first is pure chemistry; oxygen dissolves less easily in warmer water, so there is less of it around to begin with. Then, there is physics; warm water is less dense than cold and so rises to the top, but if the heat comes from the sun, the surface water warms faster anyway, separating the warm layer from the cold depths. The warm and cold water rarely mix, so any oxygen that does dissolve does not move into the deep ocean. Finally, there is biology. Warmth makes cold-blooded animals metabolize faster, requiring more oxygen, so that any oxygen that has dissolved is used up more rapidly. For active animals, this triple threat spells disaster.”
“This is not bad news for all concerned—bottom-dwelling animals like crabs and worms can generally survive at lower oxygen concentrations, but another gas poses a different problem. The rate at which carbon dioxide increased at the end of the Permian was high and supplemented by the even more potent greenhouse gas methane. We are easily exceeding those rates of CO2 emission today, and that carbon dioxide is acidifying the oceans.”
“As carbon dioxide dissolves into seawater—currently at a rate of more than 20 million tons every single day—it produces carbonic acid. This slows coral’s ability to produce their carbonate skeletons, with a 30 per cent decline in the rate of new coral production so far. Before the end of the twenty-first century, coral reefs will be dissolving at a higher rate than they are growing.”
It’s all about the math, like shooting rockets to Mars is also about, gentler reader.
“There are few true tipping points in the complex Earth system, but coral reefs are one. As the world gets warmer, and as more carbon dioxide enters the oceans, the majority of shallow coral reefs will simply cease to be. As we have seen, though, corals are not the only reef-builders. To everyone’s surprise, and in an intriguing mirror of their Jurassic [155 million years ago] heyday, glass sponge reefs are coming back.”
“Unlike past occasions when a single species or group of species has fundamentally altered the biosphere—the oxygenation of the oceans, the laying down of the coal swamps—our species is in an unusual position of control over the outcome. We know that change is occurring, we know that we are responsible, we know what will happen if it continues, we know we can stop it, and we know how. The question is whether we will try.”
What happens because of plastic particles everywhere in almost every living thing will send the oncoming environment and evolutionary changes into something, new, I suspect. I won’t be alive to see it. But based on the speed up of climate change and how many species that have gone extinct in the last few decades of my life (I am in my 70’s), your children, if you are an under 35 years old parent right now, not just your grandchildren but your children who are under ten, maybe even 15 years of age today, 2025, are going to undergo a massive lifestyle change I suspect.
Halliday ends on a hopeful note - for life continuing after us.
”Those landscapes we take for granted are not integral parts of the world; life will continue without them, without us. Eventually, the carbon dioxide we emit will be absorbed, once again, into the deep ocean, and the cycles of life and of mineral will continue. We, like every other inhabitant of our planet, have evolved alongside the current cohort of species, interacting with them in complex ways. We are part of the global ecosystem and always have been, and it is folly to think that we ourselves will not be affected by the changes we are imposing on the world.”
There are extensive Notes, Acknowledgements, Permissions and Index sections.
I also recommend for further reading: [b:The Blue Machine: How the Ocean Works|123979539|The Blue Machine How the Ocean Works|Helen Czerski|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1680049757l/123979539._SY75_.jpg|102480385] and [b:The Devil's Element: Phosphorus and a World Out of Balance|61089465|The Devil's Element Phosphorus and a World Out of Balance|Dan Egan|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1671532695l/61089465._SY75_.jpg|96285451] and [b:Great Adaptations: Star-Nosed Moles, Electric Eels, and Other Tales of Evolution’s Mysteries Solved|52579201|Great Adaptations Star-Nosed Moles, Electric Eels, and Other Tales of Evolution’s Mysteries Solved|Kenneth Catania|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1585634433l/52579201._SY75_.jpg|78241015] and [b:Wasteland: The Secret World of Waste and the Urgent Search for a Cleaner Future|63251764|Wasteland The Secret World of Waste and the Urgent Search for a Cleaner Future|Oliver Franklin-Wallis|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1669667261l/63251764._SY75_.jpg|99150237] and [b:The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs: A New History of a Lost World|35820369|The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs A New History of a Lost World|Steve Brusatte|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1515529573l/35820369._SY75_.jpg|56364062] and [b:Origins: How Earth's History Shaped Human History|42118857|Origins How Earth's History Shaped Human History|Lewis Dartnell|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1541416370l/42118857._SY75_.jpg|65710933], but most of all [b:The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History|17910054|The Sixth Extinction An Unnatural History|Elizabeth Kolbert|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1372677697l/17910054._SY75_.jpg|25095506].
Kidding! But it is beautifully written. I highly recommend this comprehensive ‘travelogue’ based on recent science discoveries. It is incredible what scientists are able to suss out from bones and old rocks and sediment.
I have copied the book blurb:
”“A kaleidoscopic and evocative journey into deep time” (Andrea Wulf, author of The Invention of Nature), from the Ice Age to the first appearance of microbial life 550 million years ago, by a brilliant young paleobiologist.
“This is as close to time travel as you are likely to get.”—Bill McKibben, author of Falter: Has the Human Game Begun to Play Itself Out?
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.”
The book is everything the blurb says and more. He describes flora and fauna from the different geological eras as if he were a National Geographic explorer watching the animals walking about and eating or hunting in forests or deserts, or as if he was scuba diving observing the critters in the ocean, before his eyes. He describes the plants that populate in whatever era in which he is doing a walkabout. I found myself wishing there had been a photographs and videos to go along with the text, but alas. There are also science explanations of how scientists know what flora and fauna was growing or was alive during the era he describes. He describes how the earth itself looked geologically, what the air was like, what the ocean was like, what the temperatures were, what geological forces were acting on the environment of that time. Explanations and descriptions are written so that they are easily understood by any reader.
Each chapter begins with an illustration of the position of the continents as they originally were during the epoch he so vividly ‘sees’. He begins with the Pleistocene Epoch in the Quaternary Period, Cenozoic Era, and moves backwards in Time with each chapter until he finishes with the Ediacaran Period in the Neoproterozoic Era - about when in Time the discoveries of the earliest fossils on Earth are, the cyanobacteria. I recommend an app, Geotimescale, which helped me visually as the author moves backwards in each chapter.
Astonishingly, what most shocked me, quote: ”We can predict what global climates should look like by comparing our atmosphere with those of the past. The atmosphere today has a composition similar to that of the Oligocene, that transitional phase between greenhouse and icehouse. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change —or IPCC—projects that within the lifetimes of children already born, we will reach—under currently implemented plans—levels of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere not seen since the Eocene [Epoch]. If we reach that atmospheric composition, we will also eventually reach Eocene temperatures.”
The Oligocene Epoch is described in chapter 4, “Homeland: Tinguiririca, Chile”, 32 million years ago. From the chapter: ”Throughout its history, the world has flipped between two stable states, an ‘icehouse’, when there is permanent ice at the poles, and a ‘greenhouse’, where that ice is absent.” Each flip of the Earth’s environment has caused extinctions, and then new forms of life take over.
And: ”When we compare our world with that of the end-Permian, we can find some worrying similarities. The oxygen loss from the oceans is not restricted to the past. It is happening today. Between 1998 and 2013 the oxygen concentration in the California Current, the major oceanic current running southwards on the west coast of North America, declined by 40 per cent. Globally, since the 1950’s, the area of low-oxygen bottom waters has expanded eight-fold, to 32 million square kilometers in 2018–twice the area of Russia—with more than a gigaton of oxygen lost from the ocean every single year for the last half-century. This is partially because algal blooms are more regularly sparked by runoff of nitrogen from agriculture, but also because the sea is becoming warmer, just as in the end-Permian.” [253 million years ago]
“Warmer seas cause a three-pronged problem for aerobic species. The first is pure chemistry; oxygen dissolves less easily in warmer water, so there is less of it around to begin with. Then, there is physics; warm water is less dense than cold and so rises to the top, but if the heat comes from the sun, the surface water warms faster anyway, separating the warm layer from the cold depths. The warm and cold water rarely mix, so any oxygen that does dissolve does not move into the deep ocean. Finally, there is biology. Warmth makes cold-blooded animals metabolize faster, requiring more oxygen, so that any oxygen that has dissolved is used up more rapidly. For active animals, this triple threat spells disaster.”
“This is not bad news for all concerned—bottom-dwelling animals like crabs and worms can generally survive at lower oxygen concentrations, but another gas poses a different problem. The rate at which carbon dioxide increased at the end of the Permian was high and supplemented by the even more potent greenhouse gas methane. We are easily exceeding those rates of CO2 emission today, and that carbon dioxide is acidifying the oceans.”
“As carbon dioxide dissolves into seawater—currently at a rate of more than 20 million tons every single day—it produces carbonic acid. This slows coral’s ability to produce their carbonate skeletons, with a 30 per cent decline in the rate of new coral production so far. Before the end of the twenty-first century, coral reefs will be dissolving at a higher rate than they are growing.”
It’s all about the math, like shooting rockets to Mars is also about, gentler reader.
“There are few true tipping points in the complex Earth system, but coral reefs are one. As the world gets warmer, and as more carbon dioxide enters the oceans, the majority of shallow coral reefs will simply cease to be. As we have seen, though, corals are not the only reef-builders. To everyone’s surprise, and in an intriguing mirror of their Jurassic [155 million years ago] heyday, glass sponge reefs are coming back.”
“Unlike past occasions when a single species or group of species has fundamentally altered the biosphere—the oxygenation of the oceans, the laying down of the coal swamps—our species is in an unusual position of control over the outcome. We know that change is occurring, we know that we are responsible, we know what will happen if it continues, we know we can stop it, and we know how. The question is whether we will try.”
What happens because of plastic particles everywhere in almost every living thing will send the oncoming environment and evolutionary changes into something, new, I suspect. I won’t be alive to see it. But based on the speed up of climate change and how many species that have gone extinct in the last few decades of my life (I am in my 70’s), your children, if you are an under 35 years old parent right now, not just your grandchildren but your children who are under ten, maybe even 15 years of age today, 2025, are going to undergo a massive lifestyle change I suspect.
Halliday ends on a hopeful note - for life continuing after us.
”Those landscapes we take for granted are not integral parts of the world; life will continue without them, without us. Eventually, the carbon dioxide we emit will be absorbed, once again, into the deep ocean, and the cycles of life and of mineral will continue. We, like every other inhabitant of our planet, have evolved alongside the current cohort of species, interacting with them in complex ways. We are part of the global ecosystem and always have been, and it is folly to think that we ourselves will not be affected by the changes we are imposing on the world.”
There are extensive Notes, Acknowledgements, Permissions and Index sections.
I also recommend for further reading: [b:The Blue Machine: How the Ocean Works|123979539|The Blue Machine How the Ocean Works|Helen Czerski|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1680049757l/123979539._SY75_.jpg|102480385] and [b:The Devil's Element: Phosphorus and a World Out of Balance|61089465|The Devil's Element Phosphorus and a World Out of Balance|Dan Egan|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1671532695l/61089465._SY75_.jpg|96285451] and [b:Great Adaptations: Star-Nosed Moles, Electric Eels, and Other Tales of Evolution’s Mysteries Solved|52579201|Great Adaptations Star-Nosed Moles, Electric Eels, and Other Tales of Evolution’s Mysteries Solved|Kenneth Catania|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1585634433l/52579201._SY75_.jpg|78241015] and [b:Wasteland: The Secret World of Waste and the Urgent Search for a Cleaner Future|63251764|Wasteland The Secret World of Waste and the Urgent Search for a Cleaner Future|Oliver Franklin-Wallis|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1669667261l/63251764._SY75_.jpg|99150237] and [b:The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs: A New History of a Lost World|35820369|The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs A New History of a Lost World|Steve Brusatte|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1515529573l/35820369._SY75_.jpg|56364062] and [b:Origins: How Earth's History Shaped Human History|42118857|Origins How Earth's History Shaped Human History|Lewis Dartnell|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1541416370l/42118857._SY75_.jpg|65710933], but most of all [b:The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History|17910054|The Sixth Extinction An Unnatural History|Elizabeth Kolbert|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1372677697l/17910054._SY75_.jpg|25095506].
hopeful
informative
lighthearted
slow-paced
informative
reflective
medium-paced
adventurous
informative
reflective
medium-paced