Book: Otherlands

Otherlands: A Journey Through Earth’s Extinct Worlds is a non-fiction science book by palaeontologist Thomas Halliday. It explores Earth’s deep past over roughly 500+ million years, reconstructing extinct environments and showing how life, climate, and ecosystems changed through time.

The book takes readers through different prehistoric “worlds” (from ancient oceans and forests to ice-age landscapes), describing how entirely different forms of life once existed in places that look very different today. It also highlights how extinction and climate shifts repeatedly reshaped life on Earth.