![]() ![]() There are two metre penguins and the surprising prevalence of sloths, now reduced somewhat in their circumstances and habitats. On the other there is the frisson of sheer weirdness. On the one hand there is the recognisable – rivers flow, forests grow, life adapts, creatures die. It requires something of a balancing act to conjure “not an endless expanse of unfathomable time, but… a series of worlds, simultaneously fabulous yet familiar”. It is a quite remarkable book, even if the dinosaurs only get a bit of a walk on part. ![]() But it is rooted firmly in the actual science – or science as it now stands, the author having won the Linnean Society Medal for the best doctorate in biological studies. To that extent it is a work of immense imagination. In part it is akin to contemporary nature writing, but the twist is none of the landscapes, fauna and flora now exist. Otherlands is an ingenious hybrid form of a book. So this new book rather whetted my interest. Even now, at a loose end, I can while away hours poring over Zoe Lescaze’s Paleoart, a sumptuous history of how we have imagined the past. I also had the Usborne Spotter’s Guide to dinosaurs, a remarkably difficult book in which to tick off sightings. I can still call into memory the illustrations in the Ladybird Dinosaur book – the triceratops fighting the tyrannosaurus, the pterodactyl with a fish in its beak, the clutch of hatching protoceratops eggs. Like most little boys, I was obsessed with dinosaurs. ![]()
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