A breezy look at the flora and fauna of 250–320 million years ago. Some of it, notably the hardy cockroach, is still with us; more, including giant, treelike lycopods (“Their young looked like hairy telephone poles, the full-grown ones like something out of a Dr. Seuss book”) or the many-legged, six-foot-long Arthropleura—shown here next to a startled modern sunbather for scale—vanished in a mysterious mass extinction. Bonner surrounds a lively, specific narrative punctuated, but not weighted down, by tongue-twisting scientific names with a gallery of simply drawn, precisely detailed land and sea life—along with the occasional single or strip cartoon featuring, for instance, a toothy prehistoric meteorologist tracking climatic changes, or a primeval newspaper bearing the headline: WATERPROOF EGG A REALITY!” She then sums up the entire history of life on this planet with an illustrated timeline (featuring a bowl of “Primordial Soup”), and closes with cogent suggestions for further paper and Web resources. Dinosaurs tend to get all the press; young readers who wonder where they came from will find some answers here, memorably delivered. (Nonfiction. 8-12)
Pub Date: March 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-7922-6326-X
Page Count: 56
Publisher: National Geographic
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2004
BOOK REVIEW
Both casual and confirmed fans will devour this delicious blend of fact and foolery with relish.
More standup-style paleontology to follow When Fish Got Feet, Sharks Got Teeth, and Bugs Began to Swarm (2007).
Here Bonner chronicles developments in the Triassic Period, during which life got a fresh lease on the planet in the wake of the massive Permian extinction. She tracks an explosion of biological diversity as the oceans were repopulated, lush forests grew and the dominant kinds of land animals went from clumsy-looking therapsids to sleek archosaurian dinosaurs and proto-crocodiles. Early mammals are already waiting in the wings, and a swelling chorus of insects (“We eat pollen, we drink sap, / We do the hungry insect rap”) make up a “bug buffet.” In the deep, toothy sharks, ichthyosaurs and other predators put in appearances—hovering, in the illustration, over a tempting platter of neatly arranged fish, clams and cephalopods. The author neatly dishes up a multi-course feast of polysyllabic monikers and tasty tidbits of data (“Later British mammals drank tea and ate scones, but these mouse-size [Morganucodon] ate bugs instead”) to go with her cartoon menagerie. The book closes with a serpentine timeline of prehistory (featuring appropriately placed plugs for each of the previous books in the series) and both adult- and child-level leads to further resources.
Both casual and confirmed fans will devour this delicious blend of fact and foolery with relish. (Nonfiction. 8-12)Pub Date: April 10, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-4263-0862-8
Page Count: 48
Publisher: National Geographic
Review Posted Online: Feb. 28, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2012
Eye candy for both serious and casual dinophiles, with an admixture of facts and fancies.
Two accomplished paleoartists invite armchair paleontologists to go eye to eye with 21 dinosaurs and flying reptiles.
Each chosen dino is presented in a two- to four-page gallery of full-body color portraits supplemented with sepia close-ups of claws and maws. They range from toothy theropods like Carcharodontosaurus saharicus—posed with jaws open, closed, and drenched in gore—and towering sauropod Argentinosaurus huinculensis to Enaliornis barretti, an early bird. All are carefully identified and caught in natural poses with faint shadows but almost no other background detail. Nearly all gaze directly up at viewers with predatory or (if vegetarian) cautionary mien. Their physical details and brightly patterned, scaly hides are worked with fine-lined realism, and colors, particularly in feathers, glow iridescently. Each entry includes a tally of basic information, a select set of descriptive labels, and a scale drawing of the creature next to a (usually much smaller) human figure. Perhaps in an effort to add verisimilitude, though, the authors salt the captions and commentary with unsupported notes on “Temperament” and behavior (“Microraptor emits a high-pitched squawk”), nor do they cite any sources or leads to further information.
Eye candy for both serious and casual dinophiles, with an admixture of facts and fancies. (pronunciation guide) (Nonfiction. 8-11)Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-63322-033-1
Page Count: 115
Publisher: Quarto
Review Posted Online: Aug. 25, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
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