Land of Lost Monsters: Man Against Beast--The Prehistoric Battle for the Planet

by Ted Oakes

After the huge success of Walking With Dinosaurs and Walking With Beasts, we now have from the same BBC stable Land of Lost Monsters. New archaeological evidence suggests that as our ancestors spread out across the planet they battled with colossal predatory mammals, strange birds, and chilling reptiles. Land of Lost Monsters reconstructs the extraordinary moments when modern humans first encountered these creatures. The first humans never saw dinosaurs, but they certainly fought with their ancestors. After the dinosaurs, huge ripper lizards, carnivorous kangaroos, doglike bears and woolly rhinoceros roamed the earth, but few know our ancestors lived with these now extinct beasts. Land of Lost Monsters looks at what happened when our ancestors met these extraordinary creatures. Did we hunt them or were we hunted? And why did they disappear? Supported by a major event on Animal Planet (July 27, 2003). Using dramatic reconstructions and spectacular "photographs" of prehistoric monsters combined with the latest archaeological and scientific discoveries, Land of Lost Monsters tells the universal story of our journey out of Africa across the continents.
After the huge success of Walking With Dinosaurs and Walking With Beasts, we now have from the same BBC stable Land of Lost Monsters. New archaeological evidence suggests that as our ancestors spread out across the planet they battled with colossal predatory mammals, strange birds, and chilling reptiles. Land of Lost Monsters reconstructs the extraordinary moments when modern humans first encountered these creatures. The first humans never saw dinosaurs, but they certainly fought with their ancestors. After the dinosaurs, huge ripper lizards, carnivorous kangaroos, doglike bears and woolly rhinoceros roamed the earth, but few know our ancestors lived with these now extinct beasts. Land of Lost Monsters looks at what happened when our ancestors met these extraordinary creatures. Did we hunt them or were we hunted? And why did they disappear? Supported by a major event on Animal Planet (July 27, 2003). Using dramatic reconstructions and spectacular "photographs" of prehistoric monsters combined with the latest archaeological and scientific discoveries, Land of Lost Monsters tells the universal story of our journey out of Africa across the continents.

Genres: History, Reference, Nonfiction, Science, Animals

208 pages, Hardcover

First published November 25, 2003

Reviews

[James · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent, though dated by more recent research (this was published in 2003.) The book was written to accompany a BBC series, but is a complete work in its own right. The subject is the many species of dangerous animals the first humans entering each part of the world encountered as they arrived. It should give the reader a healthy respect for those people's courage and resourcefulness in many cases, although not being aware of the long-term bigger picture, they unfortunately hunted a lot of these creatures to extinction.

The book is organized geographically and chronologically. The author catalogues and describes the megafauna of each continent at the time homo sapiens or homo neandertalis arrived, in the order in which those arrivals took place. A lot of it is about the lifestyles and technologies those people used to survive and thrive in places in which they were prey as well as predators.

It's well illustrated, with lots of photos of the animals that have survived, of living relatives of those that died out, and of fossils, along with excellent drawings, paintings, diagrams, and some maps. It's a suitable book for adult readers, but it would also be great to share with curious kids.

With the caution that the scientific views of a very few items have changed due to more recent discoveries, it makes a decent reference as well. If you're interested in zoology or the lives of prehistoric humanity, you'll probably like this.

[Ami Morrison · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is about how during the Pleistocene epoch ( about 100,000 - 13,000 years ago)humans first stepped out of Africa to discover and explore the rest of the world and the extraordinary animals they encountered, all for the first time. They were not the simple cave men we were taught about (briefly) in school. This book was amazing! It was very interesting learning the when and how humans branched out. I learned so much. I especially enjoyed learning about Australia because i knew next to nothing about their early history. While this was a fantastic book, if you are an animal lover, parts of this book do get rather depressing when learning just how many mighty animals have been wiped out because of early humans hunting and colonizing of the rest of the world. The last chapter, about the Polynesian islands, was particularly hard to read when you see just what kind of devastating effect they had on those islands. Mass extinctions of native wildlife and plant life, some happening shockingly as little time as 100 years. Now most of those islands have little to no natives left. Sad. But! I highly recommend this book if you are interested in learning about early human history and or want to learn more about extinct animals like wholly rhinos, 20 foot long ground sloths, giant ducks or many flightless birds... This book is for you!