7/8: The known as well as yet incomplete fossil record: 7/8: Otherlands: A Journey Through Earth's Extinct Worlds, by Thomas Halliday.
The John Batchelor Show
John Batchelor
4.5 • 2.8K Ratings
🗓️ 29 January 2023
⏱️ 13 minutes
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7/8: The known as well as yet incomplete fossil record: 7/8: Otherlands: A Journey Through Earth's Extinct Worlds, by Thomas Halliday.
https://www.amazon.com/Otherlands-Journey-Through-Earths-Extinct/dp/B097CL2BVX/ref=tmm_aud_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr1
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.
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| 0:35.5 | This is CBSI in the world. |
| 0:37.5 | I'm John Batsuit, Thomas Halliday, paleontologist and writing wonderfully of other lands, his new book, |
| 0:44.5 | A Journey Through Earth's Extinct Worlds. |
| 0:47.5 | We now go to a part of the success of Agrarian Life, the root system. |
| 0:54.5 | But did I know to pay attention to it until Thomas's book? No. |
| 0:58.5 | We go to the Devonian 470 million years ago and it's called the Michael Reisel. |
| 1:05.5 | What is that Thomas? |
| 1:06.5 | Well, Michael Reisel is composed of two parts. |
| 1:10.5 | Michael refers to fungus and the writer refers to roots. |
| 1:12.5 | It's essentially a way in which fungi and plants interact with one another to extract the maximum benefit |
| 1:20.5 | from the soil around them, from the earth around them. |
| 1:24.5 | And really this collaboration is crucial to the move of life on to land. |
| 1:29.5 | We tend to think about life appearing on land that there's some sort of hardy pioneer |
| 1:34.5 | that suddenly emerges out of the sea and wanders up on its fins. |
| 1:38.5 | But really that's not how life works, life thrives in collaboration and the movement of communities rather than individuals. |
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