Lost Animals: Extinct, Endangered, and Rediscovered Species

I received this book well packaged by Amazon. The book is beautifully done. The information and illustrations make for a nice read!

Great book, sturdy, heavy, great quality paper and printing. This has made my nephew very happy!

I loved it. Exceeded expectations....learned a great deal about the extinct animals...

Holiday present and was a huge hit!

The book starts with what may be the earliest animals found, Dickinsonia or Charnia, and ends with the Bermuda petrel (an ending with a positive story). There are a lot of interesting animals in between, like the alien-looking Hallucigenia.The chronological arrangement of the sections mostly suits it well, as they talk about "firsts," such as including the first sign of predatory animals and the fact that the first animals weren't predators (p. 27). The chronological order helps in revealing firsts such as the introduction of vertebrates (53), the first land-dwelling animals (56), animals having live births rather than laying eggs (57), and the first reptiles (69).That being said, at times the chronological nature can lead to odd things such as a snake (125) and birds (126-129) in the mammals chapter, and a tortoise in the human section (168). While I still like that they went with a chronological-type order, it does come across as a bit strange at times when reading, to suddenly run into an animal that doesn't seem to fit in the chapter it has been placed in.As a reviewer, I was disappointed to get an advanced copy. I was unable to experience the beauty of full-color illustrations and photos, and images of unfamiliar creatures are important to knowing what they were like. Of course, I am not letting this influence my rating. I'm just unable to comment on an important part of the book. Just in general about the images, though, I wish they showed concept art of all the animals. It is not easy to tell what an animal looked like by looking at fossils. Thankfully, there are images for most that show what they are believed to have looked like.

OK, I read a lot of books in this genre so a lot of this is old hat, but many of the specific examples in this book were new and novel. The book does a great job of showing the amazing diversity in the fossil record and does a good job narrating the change in this biodiversity over time, noting Mass and minor extinctions and giving an idea of the punctuated loss and gradual building of biodiversity.I especially appreciate the attention to less mainstream characters it brings up. I does a great job of talking about Cambrian and Permian creatures that don't have the appeal of Dinos and Mammoths, but tell a rich story of their own. Also, they feature Jurassic beetles whose pollinating the new flowers story is seldom told. Even the dinos discussed are often second ranked dinos that rarely get their fair shake. It also does a good job of showing the evolutionary trees that got us here, including the Human lineage. And it brings us up to today, pulling unique stories like Wallace's Giant Bee to celebrate our current biodiversity and introduce another possible punctuation of our biodiversity. All Great information.It is a great read, animal accounts are short and succinct and filled with illustrations. It is a wonder to flip through and to sit down and read. Nothing gets too into the weeds of details, but delves into some amazing natural history stories. Personally I loved it, scientific theory is up to date, images are great. Recommend!

Smithsonian usually does a bang up job on their science books, offering truly informative, even if brief, write-ups, detailed photos, and delightful drawings / paintings. This book lives up to that reputation.It starts with early animals, beginning around 700 million years ago, such as sponges, then works it’s way through early land animals, dinosaurs, early mammals, homid / humans, and animals of the Anthropocene Era. It looks at individual species, rather than a broad sweep of each time period; but since it covers a wide array of species, you still get a good overview. Some of the species are well known and some are not.This is an informative and visually appealing book; very well suited to the coffee table, as well as to detailed pouring over. But that’s JustMe. (I received this product in exchange for an honest review, and that is what I have offered here.)

Don't know what I really expected with this book, but it didn't provide it. Expected more. Some interesting stories, but overall disappointing. Person who received this book claimed to be pleased, but I wasn't