EXTINCTION THEN AND NOW: 3/8: Otherlands: A Journey Through Earth's Extinct Worlds, by Thomas Halliday.
The John Batchelor Show
John Batchelor
4.5 • 2.8K Ratings
🗓️ 15 January 2024
⏱️ 14 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 life.
1923
Transcript
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| 0:15.4 | This is CBSi in the world I'm John Bachelor with Thomas Halladay paleontologist |
| 0:20.7 | evolutionary biologists riding other lands a journey through Earth's |
| 0:26.7 | extinct world 41 million years ago it's warm it's very warm there's no ice on the planet to be found. |
| 0:35.0 | We're looking at the dawn of the recent to how to understand this. |
| 0:40.0 | Now we've paid attention to the land creatures. Thomas takes us to Seymour Island and |
| 0:46.6 | gigantic penguins. Where is it, Thomas? Where was it then and where is it today? |
| 0:52.0 | Well fortunately it hasn't actually moved all that |
| 0:55.3 | much in the intervening millions of years. Seymour Island is today a small island off |
| 1:00.5 | the West Antarctic Peninsula so it's the site of Antarctic research bases. |
| 1:04.8 | It's that the West Antarctic Peninsula is that spit of Antarctica which stretches up towards |
| 1:09.5 | South America. And at the time it was still part of this peninsula and what was different of course is at that time |
| 1:18.0 | it was a little bit closer to South America and the stretch of water that currently separates them, which is today known as the Drake Passage, had only just opened up. |
| 1:27.0 | And that was something that was going to have huge impacts on the environment of particularly Antarctica, but the world as a whole. |
| 1:34.7 | By opening up the Drake Passage you get the second polar current, which is this |
| 1:40.1 | oceanic current that goes all the way around Antarctica and doesn't get stopped by any |
| 1:46.3 | sort of continental landmass. And because this opened up, this is the point of which Antarctica begins to cool down. |
| 1:54.6 | You get a separation of the weather system of the South Pole and prevents the sort of exchange |
| 1:58.8 | of warmth with the tropics. And as such, you know, glaciers begin to emerge in the |
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