Anton Thomas, a New Zealander in Melbourne, Australia, has given three years of his life to a hand-drawn map of our planet and its animal inhabitants.
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    11 months ago

    This is the best summary I could come up with:

    In Australia, marsupials abound: A snarling Tasmanian devil stands before craggy Cradle Mountain, while a stubby brown wombat surveils the Great Australian Bight.

    The map uses a Natural Earth projection, and its center runs through 11 degrees east of Greenwich Meridian, just past Oslo, in part to give New Zealand and Fiji a more harmonious placement.

    Later, on moving to Australia, Mr. Thomas honed his skills as an illustrator and cartographer, eventually spending five years on a many-layered, full-color map of North America.

    When the coronavirus struck, he was at the point of sending prints of that map to customers, and it was not until July 2020 that he could embark on “Wild World,” armed with a new easel and magnifying glass, and with an empty schedule stretching before him.

    On July, 28, 2023, the pandemic long over, Mr. Thomas added the last touches to his map: six final creatures, including a golden-breasted songbird, a bat weighing less than half an ounce, and a bristly arachnid.

    For Mr. Patterson, the former Park Service cartographer, Mr. Thomas’s work stands alone — done entirely by hand without digital backups or erase tools and with a level of detail that inspires the viewer to place their nose ever closer to the page.

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