A:LL OF US CREATURES IN GARDENS: 4/8: Otherlands: A Journey Through Earth's Extinct Worlds, by Thomas Halliday.
The John Batchelor Show
John Batchelor
4.5 • 2.8K Ratings
🗓️ 24 September 2023
⏱️ 7 minutes
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Summary
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 lifeA:LL OF US CREATURES IN GARDENS: 1/8: 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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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is CBS Out of the World, I'm John Bachelorette with Thomas Halliday, a paleontologist |
| 0:06.8 | and author, writing magically and convincingly of other lands journey through Earth's extinct |
| 0:14.5 | worlds. |
| 0:15.5 | This is before the asteroid, before the death of the dinosaurs is called the Cretaceous |
| 0:20.2 | Period, 125 million years ago. |
| 0:23.2 | And I learned from Thomas to call dinosaurs knuckle walkers. |
| 0:27.0 | What does that mean, Thomas? |
| 0:30.2 | Knuckle walkers, I suppose what you're talking about, is some of the titanosaurian |
| 0:35.1 | sauropods. |
| 0:36.1 | Yeah, the titanosaurus that was a knuckle walker, and what they picture and form. |
| 0:41.7 | Well, I mean, the reason I call the knuckle walkers is because they, through their evolution, |
| 0:47.0 | when they're attaining such large sizes, in order to have this kind of pillar-like limb, |
| 0:52.8 | one of the things that titanosaurs in particular do is they lose the bones that are the same |
| 0:56.5 | as our fingers. |
| 0:57.5 | They lose their digibuns. |
| 0:58.5 | And so their front feet are essentially just highly sort of modified hand bones. |
| 1:05.4 | They're working on the ends of their knuckle. |
| 1:06.9 | So that's what I meant by that way. |
| 1:08.9 | Oh, we, you write that this is the heyday of non-avian dinosaurs, the titanosaurus is |
| 1:15.4 | 17 meters long, very large. |
| 1:20.1 | And these are herbivores, they're eating the prosperity of the earth. |
| 1:27.6 | What does the, what does the forest look like at this time? |
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