Ancient Marine Reptiles

If you were thinking about buying this book for your kids or a dinofan friend, a word of advise: it mightbe a bit over their heads. This book is basically an amalgamate of scientific papers without any editorial instrusion; they are true scientific papers for scientists in the style of scientific journals. Though profusely illustrated, it is not a field guide with lots of recreations and dioramas which might be what most kids and dinofans would want. Most of the illustrations are maps of the areas where a sample fossil was found or drawings and pictures of actual fossil bone at the site where found. Only the turtles and crocodiles sections of the book have some recreations of the creatures; but you will not find a single recreation drawing of an ichthyosaur. For the scientific reader this is a definite 5 star, for most everyone it might be only 2 or 3 star.

The detailed discussions about the anatomies of the various creatures and their environments were very interesting. There was a lot of detail about the anatomy of many of the fossils of the animals of the deep.

Unless your a paleontologist yourself, this book will probably be too technical to read and too dry to enjoy. Specialists familiar with serious scientific jargon may delight in Ancient Marine Reptiles. Otherwise, you're bound to get a headache trying to understand what's going on.

The depth of knowledge and technical approach to the studies covered in the book was very satisfying.

I basically agree with the three other reviews until the date of this review; however, just because some disappointed individuals were thinking they were getting a childrens book with cool artists renditions of some marine reptiles doesn't make it bad. This book is certainly geared towards the professional individual. I recommend it to those looking for a tome of information on ancient marine reptiles compiled from peer reviewed scientific literature. It may also be of interest to those who are serious about reptiles and want to learn more of their prehistoric past.

The editors, Callaway and Nicholls, have assembled 17 papers describing the results of current research by the experts on the various groups of extinct marine reptiles (Ichthyosaurs, Plesiosaurs, Turtles, Mosasaurs and Crocodiles), and their associated faunas, behavior and evolution. Well researched and profusely illustrated, this book is a must read for those seriously interested in the biology, ecology and paleontology of this diverse and fascinating group of animals.

The book is apparently hard to find, out of print. That's a pity given the scarcity of material on the topic. Moving on to content: it's a collection of papers regarding different marine reptiles (plesiosaurs, mosasaurs, ichtyosaurs, crocodiles, turtles..) but there is no comprehensive coverage. Any general information is a generalization of a particular topic, it's not conceived as a "top down" book on the subject. And such a book is painly missing. The only one that gets close, if interested, is "Sea Dragons by Ellis, that conversely is a little verbose and lacks skeletal drawings, and feels superficial and divulgative. Anyway, for 30 euro it's a bargain, at the usual 80-100 euro it's up to you, know what you buy.