Summary of Thomas Halliday's Otherlands

Everest Media

Description

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book.
Sample Book Insights:
#1 The Alaskan horses are close to the size of ponies, and their coats are shaggy and dun. They are the truest inhabitants of the arid north, and they remain no matter the conditions. Their life expectancy is 15 years.
#2 The American lion, the largest of the three, is descended from ancestors that moved across from Eurasia about 340,000 years ago. The African lion is the daintiest. They are both large cats, and they hunt the same prey: horses and caribou.
#3 Ecosystems are built piecemeal. The aggregations of species that produce a sense of place also provide a sense of time. A community is a temporary association of living things that depends on evolutionary history, climate, geography, and chance.
#4 The first Americans were small communities of eastern Beringian humans, who thrived in the low plains of Beringia. As the climate changed, and humans gained an ever-deeper foothold in the continent, many of the native species died out.

Sujets

• Sciences de la nature
• Biologie
• Géographie
• Géographie
• Géographie
• Géographie
• Paleontology

Informations

• Publié par: Everest Media LLC
• Date de parution: 22 mars 2022
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781669357667
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

Insights on Thomas Halliday's Otherlands
Contents Insights from Chapter 1 Insights from Chapter 2 Insights from Chapter 3 Insights from Chapter 4 Insights from Chapter 5 Insights from Chapter 6 Insights from Chapter 7 Insights from Chapter 8 Insights from Chapter 9 Insights from Chapter 10 Insights from Chapter 11 Insights from Chapter 12 Insights from Chapter 13 Insights from Chapter 14 Insights from Chapter 15 Insights from Chapter 16
Insights from Chapter 1

#1

The Alaskan horses are close to the size of ponies, and their coats are shaggy and dun. They are the truest inhabitants of the arid north, and they remain no matter the conditions. Their life expectancy is 15 years.

#2

The American lion, the largest of the three, is descended from ancestors that moved across from Eurasia about 340,000 years ago. The African lion is the daintiest. They are both large cats, and they hunt the same prey: horses and caribou.

#3

Ecosystems are built piecemeal. The aggregations of species that produce a sense of place also provide a sense of time. A community is a temporary association of living things that depends on evolutionary history, climate, geography, and chance.

#4

The first Americans were small communities of eastern Beringian humans, who thrived in the low plains of Beringia. As the climate changed, and humans gained an ever-deeper foothold in the continent, many of the native species died out.

#5

The Pleistocene North Slope in winter is one place where the environment passes out of the fundamental niche of many creatures. The constant ankle-stinging wind that hisses through the Ikpikpuk dunes is part of a vast anti-clockwise gyre of wind centred far to the south-west of here.

#6

The Beringian land bridge, which connected Alaska to Russia, was sunken by the sea. This province is just one part of an extensive biome that begins in eastern Beringia and ends on the Atlantic coast of Ireland.

#7

The steppe continues to exist because of its connectivity. Ice age weather patterns are volatile, and conditions can change dramatically from year to year. If you were to set up camp in one place for years, the populations would seem to go through extreme cycles of boom and bust, with the weather and plant life favoring horses, then bison, and so on.

#8

Summer begins in the Arctic, and the horses head to a low cloud swirling beyond a hillock. The hanging mist signals the presence of a rare pool, formed from the melt that has gathered in a warmer, sheltered hollow.

#9

The Arctodus simus, the largest of the Alaskan short-faced bears, was a giant pursuit predator. It was not common, and its behavior was poorly understood. It was thought that their long limbs might be an adaptation to running, but they were probably just big bears that preferred to walk rather than run.

#10

The Beringian steppe was a thriving community of herbivore herds that was painted by the large numbers of predators that lived there. The ecosystem must follow certain rules, and energy must flow into it to replace what is lost through activity and decay.

#11

The thaw pool is the beginning of the transformation of the mammoth steppe. As the ice sheets melt and the sea levels rise, there is more water available for evaporation, which leads to more clouds and eventually warmer summers. This is the beginning of a transformation that will end the mammoth steppe.

#12

The change from a steppic landscape to a permafrost and peat bog ecosystem in modern-day conditions took only a few hundred years in Alaska. The climate has shifted beyond the horse’s niche-space.

#13

The mammoth steppe is a romantic vision of life gone by, and it is attracting attention as a lost past. The extinct past is closer than we often care to think, and alongside the decline of the Pleistocene came the rise of human civilizations.

#14

The largest biome on the planet, the Pleistocene world, will eventually sink into mire. Gatherings of species in time and space may seem like stability, but these communities can only last as long as the conditions that help to create them persist.
Insights from Chapter 2

#1

The arrival of the swifts marks the return of fertility and life, as the rains begin after more than four months without rain. The rise of these highlands and the Tibetan plateau has diverted the winds that once watered north-western Africa, changing the patterns of rainfall across the region.

#2

The Pliocene was a time of great biodiversity, and it was in this world that the first humans would emerge. The rivers were muddy, and the birds and insects were flying around freely. The only thing that could fly that fast and free was the swift.

#3

The Kerio River and Lake Lonyumun are teeming with fish, which are mollusc-eating characins. The river and lake are also home to waterbirds.

#4

The marabou stork is a bird that regularly appears wherever humans live. It is a scavenger, and it has been known to inhabit landfill sites and dumps. It is also known as the undertaker because it scavenges on carcasses.

#5

The Kerio River flows through the town of Kanapoi, and is a great example of how the land in Kenya is varied. The river has well-drained sand banks, but clay banks where it flows through the town.