Otherlands by Thomas Halliday

What would it be like to visit the ancient landscapes of the past? To experience the Jurassic or Cambrian worlds, to wander among these other lands, as creatures extinct for millions of years roam? In this mesmerizing debut, the award-winning palaeontologist Thomas Halliday gives us a breath-taking up close encounter with worlds that are normally unimaginably distant. Journeying backwards in time from the most recent Ice Age to the dawn of complex life itself, and across all seven continents, Halliday immerses us in a series of extinct ecosystems, each one rendered with a novelist's eye for detail and drama. 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 fact. We visit the birthplace of humanity in Pliocene-era Kenya; in the Jurassic, we wander among dinosaur-inhabited islands in the Mediterranean; and we gaze at the light of an enormous moon in the Ediacaran sky, when life hasn't yet reached land. Otherlands is a naturalist's travel guide, albeit one of lands distant in time rather than space, showing us the last 500 million years not as an endless expanse of unfathomable time, but as a series of worlds, simultaneously fantastical and familiar.

While I have not read widely enough within paleontology to make any definitive claims, Otherlands seems to me like a powerful candidate for the definitive history-of-life book for adult paleontology enthusiasts. Paleontologist Thomas Halliday writes with both the authority of an expert and the lyricism of a novelist. The text consists of sixteen chapters, and in each Halliday uses his aptitude for language to revive the organisms of a particular fossil site. Halliday proceeds in reverse chronological order, beginning with Pleistocene Alaska and concluding with the Ediacaran biota.

Halliday makes a point of highlighting lesser-appreciated organisms and geological periods. Of the sixteen main chapters, only three are dedicated to the respective periods of the Mesozoic Era, and even within those sections, dinosaurs are not always the primary focus. The rest of the book concerns Cenozoic, Paleozoic, and pre-Cambrian life, which was a marvelous choice. I love dinosaurs as much as the next person, but they have been written about to death, and it's about time for other incredible extinct taxa to receive their due. Especially during the Paleozoic chapters, plants, fungi, and microorganisms all play a critical role in the author's narrative. Global geography also receives significant attention.

The quality of Halliday's prose is very reminiscent of a nature documentary; he often describes a plausible behavior being performed by a specific individual of a given taxon. It is easy to imagine the text of Otherlands being read aloud by Kenneth Branagh or David Attenborough. Nevertheless, technical terms abound—this is not a book that underestimates the reader's intelligence or forces humor at inappropriate times. Halliday's technical precision clearly comes from a place of love and respect for paleontology rather than haughtiness, and his admiration for his field of work oozes from each sentence. Given the amount of scientific language that this kind of book necessitates, he occasionally steps away from the documentary style to explain a technical concept in an approachable way. However, these digressions never feel out of place.

More than just a celebration of paleontology (and a superb one at that), Otherlands also functions as a rousing call to action against anthropogenic climate change. Halliday's epilogue contextualizes the mass extinction we are currently causing by comparing it to those extinctions about which we have already read earlier in the book. Halliday is neither excessively optimistic nor alarmist; nevertheless, his detailed descriptions of ripple effects in our oceans, soil, and atmospheric systems are truly unsettling to read. He is also absolutely correct to point out that the countries that have contributed the least to climate change are liable to suffer from it the most, and vice versa.

The history of life on Earth is a topic of boundless depth and beauty, and for Halliday to have captured both the grandeur and peculiarity of paleontology (in his debut, no less) is a massive achievement on his part. It is my fervent wish that he continue to write science books for a general audience. This man has a gift, and each of his readers receives it.

(I agree with other reviewers that more illustrations would have been appreciated. I found myself frequently consulting Google Images. Perhaps in a later edition this issue will be rectified.)

Very good pop science. Thomas Halliday is a skillful writer, and he takes us on an interesting journey through deep time. He reads the rocks and chemistry to provide us with detailed snapshots of ecosystems that once existed on this planet. These ecosystems changed dramatically over time and were truly alien worlds – very different indeed from the present.
This is an interesting book, but it is not predigested pap. Some science background would be helpful in understanding. I found myself going to the internet frequently for images of some of the lifeforms described.
Recommended for those with an interest in the history of our planet.
4+ stars.