cover of Animals of a Bygone Era: An Illustrated Compendium [A Mammoth and a plesiosaur adorn the cover]

Animals of a Bygone Era: An Illustrated Compendium

by Maja Safstrom Author

A beautifully illustrated collection of fascinating, surprising, and funny facts about extinct animals.

The dinosaurs lived on the earth for 165 million years, before ultimately going extinct 65 million years ago. The first humans appeared five million years ago.  

 

Do you ever wonder what happened in between? It was the age of the uber-mammals that ruled the lands and seas and skies more effectively than the dinosaurs before and without [ahem] causing any of the climate change that later ascendant mammals would.

 

Animals of a Bygone Era hows us the story of the megafauna. You know cave bears and mastodons and saber-toothed tigers, sure. But what about the giant sea scorpion, the unicorn-like synthetoceras or the sharovipteryx (a flying reptile & the only animal ever discovered with leg wings)? How about the giant ground sloth (the reason we still have avocados today)? Or the saddle-backed rodrigues giant tortoise (which, let's face it, is a pretty cool name.)?

 

Swedish artists Maja Säfström illustrates dozens of these funky critters just so you too can geek out about your favorite megafauna.