Though the book provides illustrations, I would suggest you keep a computer nearby to image search the names of many lesser-known actors that make their appearance in these pages. Halliday's prose is written with such visual cues that you can read the entirety of Otherlands in the voice of David Attenborough if you so choose, as if you were reading the script of a Prehistoric Planet sequel instead.

If you are simply interested in history, Otherlands will introduce you to giant forest-dwelling penguins of the Eocene, armor-studded inhabitants of Pangaean Niger, and deep sea vent communities of Silurian Russia. While it is not the first book of its kind to do so, Otherlands breaks the mold in two key ways: first, by telling the story of life in reverse chronological order, and second by focusing on organisms and locations that are often overlooked. That is all to say: I, and I think many of you, are eager for retellings that break the usual mold. In gearing the story of life towards the presumed interests of a broad audience, we are often delivered stories that narrowly hit the pop culture favorites (dinosaurs, and a select few at that) while tying well-intentioned calls to action over human-driven climate change with the only known mass extinction that was entirely driven by non-organismal factors. Time between the end-Cretaceous extinction and the modern day is likewise flattened for the purpose of linking the fragility of modern life to the unimaginable disaster that upended the reign of dinosaurs. The Triassic itself is often treated as a prologue of the Jurassic, and the Jurassic as a stepping stone to the Cretaceous.

Oftentimes, the pre-dinosaur portion (the majority of Earth's history, by far) is rushed hurriedly told, or skipped over entirely in favor of starting with the very end of the Triassic. It's generally told in three acts: before dinosaurs, dinosaurs, and after dinosaurs. If you're here, there's a good chance you already know the broad strokes of Earth's history. One of the most common requests on this subreddit are for book suggestions, so I thought I'd provide a quick review of one I recently finished and enjoyed, titled Otherlands: A Journey Through Earth's Extinct Worlds.

Thomas halliday otherlands review