Otherlands - Thomas Halliday

From a dazzling young palaeontologist and prodigiously talented writer comes the Earth as we've never seen it before

What would it be like to experience the ancient landscapes of the past as we experience the reality of nature today? To actually visit the Jurassic or Cambrian worlds, to wander among their spectacular flora and fauna, to witness their continental shifts? In Otherlands, the multi-talented palaeontologist Thomas Halliday gives us a breath-taking up close encounter with worlds that are normally unimaginably distant.

Journeying backwards in time from the most recent Ice Age to the dawn of complex life itself, and across all seven continents, Halliday immerses us in sixteen lost ecosystems, each one rendered with a novelist's eye for detail and drama. Every description - whether the colour of a beetle's shell, the shambling rhythm of pterosaurs in flight or the lingering smell of sulphur in the air - is grounded in fact. We visit the birthplace of humanity on the shores of the great lake Lonyumun, in Pliocene-era Kenya; in the Miocene, we hear the crashing of the highest waterfall the world has ever known as it fills the evaporated Mediterranean Sea; we encounter forests of giant fungus nine metres tall in Devonian-era Scotland; and we gaze at the light of a full and enormous moon in the Ediacaran sky, when life hasn't yet reached land.

To read Otherlands is to time travel, to see the last 550 million years not as an endless expanse of unfathomable time, but as a series of worlds, simultaneously fantastical and familiar.

Free Freight is offered on New Zealand deliverable orders of over $300.

Our shipping rates are based on the cost of your combined purchases.

As a general rule, orders will be dispatched from our Queenstown store, on the next business day after payment is received. Sometimes, we might achieve same day dispatch, however this is not guaranteed. All orders are freighted via standard security freight, utilising several different Third Party couriers. The courier used will depend on product ordered and the delivery address. Dispatch will usually take 1-3 business days from leaving our store. Freight for items/destinations outside of normal regions, should be negotiated prior to dispatch.

Click and Collect - With online purchases, the customer has an option to personally collect from our NZSHRED store at 19 Shotover Street, Queenstown. These purchases are freight & handling free-of-charge.

Please note all solid Watersports boards (eg: Paddleboards, Surfboards, Wakeboards & Skates) are generally Click and Collect ONLY. We can on occasions quote on freighting of these to New Zealand destinations. This cost will be 100% incurred by the customer. 

For all International Orders, a phone number is required so please include. For China a Resident ID is also required.

Send us a message through our Customer Service page or use our Live Chat - just click the red bubble on the right hand side

Collapsible tab content