Notes

Table of contents: Measuring the Earth's age -- 1. The long isolation begins : 83 million years ago -- 2. Beneath Cretaceous seas : 83-65 million years ago -- 3. Cretaceous coasts : 83-65 million years ago -- 4. When the world nearly ended : 65 million years ago -- 5. Paleogene seas and seashores : 65-24 million years ago -- 6. Beneath Paleogene and Neogene seas : 65-16 million years ago -- 7. Neogene reptiles, then and now : 20 million years ago to today -- 8. New Zealand's moa : 83 million to 300 years ago -- 9. The rise of the Southern Alps : 5 million years ago -- 10. The ice ages : 1.8 million to 850,000 years ago -- 11. Taupo erupts : 1,800 years ago -- 12. Auckland's volcanoes : 150,000 to 600 years ago -- 13. Lost swamp forests and wetland birds : 750 years ago to today -- 14. Mount Tarawera erupts : 10 June 1886 -- 15. Recently lost birds and rarities : 1840 to today -- 16. The Hawke's Bay earthquake : 3 February 1931