Prehistoric Pets

by Dean Lomax (Text by), Mike Love (Illustrator)

Overview

What did your guinea pig's great-great-great-great-great-grandparents look like?

Paleontologist Dr. Dean Lomax takes a close look at seven of our favorite pets and uses fossil clues to reveal who their prehistoric ancestors might be. Incredible pop-ups bring you face-to-face with awesome ancient creatures, including a velociraptor, a saber-toothed cat, and the giant snake Titanoboa. This book is packed full of fun facts about amazing animals and fascinating fossils.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781536217148
Publisher:	Candlewick Press
Publication date:	09/07/2021
Pages:	30
Product dimensions:	10.13(w) x 10.13(h) x 1.02(d)
Age Range:	5 - 9 Years

About the Author

Dr. Dean Lomax is an internationally recognized and award-winning palaeontologist, presenter, and author. He has traveled the globe excavating dinosaurs and has described several new species of prehistoric reptile. He lives in the UK.

Mike Love has a master’s in fine art from the Aberystwyth University School of Art. From astronauts and knights to vampires and dragons, he has a love for working with imagination and narrative. He lives in the UK.

Editorial Reviews

Filling in the spaces around Love’s fetching portraits of wild and domestic modern creatures, paleontologist Lomax natters on about the main types and characteristics of cats, dogs, fish, rodents, and other familiar animal families. This information appears on the outer leaves of each double-page spread, but the stars of the show are the pop-up figures that rear dramatically with each lift of a gatefold. . . . Whether today’s pets would kill and/or eat us given the chance may be a matter for debate…but as for their predecessors, readers will come away with no such doubts.
—Kirkus Reviews

From the Publisher

2021-07-14
A pop-up introduction to the extinct ancestors of Ernest the guinea pig, Flossy the Siamese cat, and five more domesticated cuties.

Filling in the spaces around Love’s fetching portraits of wild and domestic modern creatures, paleontologist Lomax natters on about the main types and characteristics of cats, dogs, fish, rodents, and other familiar animal families. This information appears on the outer leaves of each double-page spread, but the stars of the show are the pop-up figures that rear dramatically with each lift of a gatefold. Who lies at the far end of Lucky the parakeet’s ancestral line? Velociraptor! Bubbles the goldfish? Jurassic leviathan Leedsichthys! Jasper the little corn snake? Wait for it…Titanoboa!—depicted casually crushing a prehistoric crocodile for a snack. Except for cat-sized Sifrhippus, earliest known ancestor of Pippa the horse, the selected progenitors assume thrillingly predatory poses as they hover over further descriptive notes and smaller images of both fossil finds and contemporary flora and fauna. Whether today’s pets would kill and/or eat us given the chance may be a matter for debate…but as for their predecessors, readers will come away with no such doubts.

Visual drama paired to a substantial informational load. (Informational pop-up picture book. 6-10)

Kirkus Reviews