OTHERLANDS, a world in the making

384pp., illus., maps, paperback, London, 2022

“Kaleidoscopic and evocative ... [Halliday] takes quiet fossil records and complex scientific research and brings them alive - riotous, full-colored, and three-dimensional. You’ll find yourself next to giant two-meter penguins in a forested Antarctica 41 million years ago or hearing singing icebergs in South Africa some 444 million years ago. Maybe most important, Otherlands is a timely reminder of our planet’s impermanence and what we can learn from the past.” Andrea Wulf, author of The Invention of Nature

“A fascinating journey through Earth’s history ... [Halliday] is appropriately lavish in his depiction of the variety and resilience of life, without compromising on scientific accuracy. To read Otherlands is to marvel not only at these unfamiliar lands and creatures, but also that we have the science to bring them to life in such vivid detail.” New Scientist

Thomas Halliday is a palaeontologist and evolutionary biologist. He holds a Leverhulme Early Career Fellowship at the University of Birmingham, and is a scientific associate of the Natural History Museum. He was the winner of the Linnean Society's John C. Marsden Medal in 2016 and the Hugh Miller Writing Competition in 2018.