Other Lands

Glacial periods and warming climates, mass extinction of species and periods of mass flourishing. Life on Earth is cyclical, but with each turn it takes on completely different forms, adapted to new environmental conditions. We move from the shallow waters of Australia, where we see the first microorganisms of the Ediacaran period, to the savannas of Kenya in the Pliocene era, where australopithecines live, from desert salt flats that will become the Mediterranean Sea in the future, to the tropical forests of Antarctica. Each description – whether it is the color of a beetle's shell, the speed of pterosaurs in flight, or the persistent smell of sulfur in the air – is based on the record of fossils. These lost worlds seem fantastic, although some of them have survived on Earth to this day. Paleobiology will reveal the secrets of Earth's past and make us look at the future differently.