Hey Blog! Book review time again.
The book I am reviewing today I have possessed since I was four, and was living in Barbados (the most eastern island in the Caribbean) which is a little lump of coral not much more than a million years old. However, I went through the phase almost every child goes through growing up, and that is to be supremely interested in dinosaurs. I heard a couple of small people in a park yesterday playing a game where there was a lab and dinosaur fossils – not certain, but I expect the game was that one of the fossils had woken up! I was convinced that there had been dinosaurs on Barbados, even though the last mass extinction that killed them off was around 64 million years before the isle’s head poked above the waves, so I tried digging in the garden. I didn’t find much of interest, but I’m sure it gave me a lasting hobby and interest in dinos, and my interest in palaeontology (the study of prehistory) would eventually lead me to archaeology (the study of human history). Anyway, my big brother gave me a book for my birthday, I think it was, and this book is still with me, even though the spine has fallen off and there’s not much more than a few bits of webbing holding the front cover on! However, I take that to be a sign the book has been extensively loved.
Dinosaurs: a children’s encyclopedia is the first thick book I ever got. I still can’t know all of it, as the facts it contains span from the beginning of life, to the evolution of humans. It also discusses evolution, the construction of eukaryotes (multicellular organisms, yes, you are a eukaryote!) continental drift, the atmosphere and climate, relative size, the formation of fossils, and all that before even reaching the creature information! This information is presented in fact file format, with basic information such as when the creature lived, where it was found, what habitat it lived in, and how big it was. Then the paragraph or two of information says extra notes, and any other information from prehistory or when it had been discovered.
The book covers weird creatures from the dawn of life on earth, such as Hallucigenia, the thing with either spines or fleshy tentacles for legs, and the other for back decoration; and things like Echinoderms, the group of animals that include starfish, meaning the family that began in the Cambrian Explosion (when living things went through a huge boom in life, causing millions of fossils to appear) is still around today. It details insects, gastropods, giant dragonflies, ammonites, and all that before getting to the vertebrates. In here, the book tells of fish, such as the megatooth shark (probably the most terrifying predator of all time – it had jaws five times the size of a great white!) amphibians and reptiles, and then, in the next section, dinosaurs. All the common names, such as T Rex, Diplodocus, Velociraptor, Compsognathus, Stegosaurus, Pachycephalosaurus, and many more, as well as the less well-known ones, are in here; though seeing as we don’t yet know all species alive on Earth right now, and the dinosaurs existed for about 180 million years, it’s impossible to know all the species that existed in that time. We usually find only the bigger ones, as anything small is less easy to see, and less likely to have been preserved.
I used to have a special relationship with one of the species above – yes, I am referring to Dippy, the Diplodocus at London’s Natural History Museum (relationship not that I was engaged to a dinosaur, but I was friends with it). We had telephone calls across the Atlantic, and he once came over for a visit – I spent about a month piling up leaves in a corner of the garden ready for his visit! I don’t know how he got there; he must have either inspired the story of the Loch Ness Monster but in the middle of the ocean, or flown over on a few Quetzalocoatluses, Quetzalocoatlus being the largest known pterosaur. The former of these, the mythical monster that lives in the loch at Ness, is said to be a different type of creature, a plesiosaur/pliosaur, both water-dwelling reptiles with very sharp teeth, the main difference being plesiosaurs had extremely long necks and pliosaurs were in the same family but had shorter necks. It has been swimming around for about a thousand years, though recent developments in sonar and other systems have all failed to locate it. The latter is a type of flying reptile, with wings almost identical to bats but unrelated to bats or birds. They might have hunted like gannets, diving into the sea, or they might have been more like land-dwelling birds. I am 99% sure that discoveries of pterosaurs inspired the stereotypical western dragon, but it is more likely that a different ancient species inspired the stereotypical eastern dragon. Either way, these flying reptiles ruled the skies for a bit more than a hundred million years, before the mass extinction at the end of the Cretaceous period drove them all extinct. WARNING: that was 65 million years ago, and some experts think we’re already overdue for the next one!
I really like the book as it is so useful for even more than dinosaurs, but all prehistoric life. Because it spans such a vast time frame, and contains so many facts, descriptions, and interpretations, it is my go-to book for anything related to this area. It’s essential to learn about evolution, and mass extinctions, so we can prevent any more of the world’s weird and wonderful life forms becoming extinct. I feel that I wouldn’t be anywhere near so knowledgeable about dinosaurs without this book, and I can pass on that knowledge to others – someone asked on a group chat I’m on the other day what species of dinosaur she thought a fossil was, so although I couldn’t give an accurate answer, my idea was the same as hers (Compsognathus)!
One of my aims is to find a large(ish) fossil one day. So far, I have a few pieces of coral, a sea urchin or two, a small piece of fossilised tree, and not much more! However, we don’t live near the sea, so it’s less likely to find much. However, I’ll still keep digging in the garden!
RARRRRRR………