Published in 2020

Three students travel across South Africa on a journey back in time to the earth’s greatest climate disaster while being pursued by their evil professor.

The book alternates between the story of Nobantu and her true-dog-tooth clan of cynodonts in the late Permian and the story of four geologists in the present day as they travel across South Africa, looking at Permian fossils and speculating about the animals that existed back then.

Nobantu decides her clan must leave their burrows and travel south, to escape the deadly H2S gas that periodically blows in from the ocean. As they travel south, they face an array of challenges. They must find food and water under a baking sun, they are attacked by predators like the giant gorgonopsian, they are hunted by a pack of archosaur lizards, and they are trailed and finally attacked by the evil beast-head therocephalian animals who are their deadly enemies. A reduced group finally makes it to their promised land in a pristine canyon in South Africa.

The geologists have their own issues as they travel across South Africa to the present-day site of the canyon. The three students must deal with the bad behavior of their professor. Once they reach the canyon, the area is flooded and they all must fight for their own survival.

This is the story of a unique time in the earth’s history, when a climate disaster forced species to adapt to survive. Due to the choices made by a group of cynodonts in the Permian period, a branch on the tree of life was created that led to the birth of modern humans.