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Secret Stories of Lost Beasts: A Field Guide to Uncover Earth’s Ancient Animals
The secret lives and amazing adaptations of past creatures are revealed in this beautifully illustrated compendium of Earth’s long-gone beasts.
Buried far beneath the ground are secret stories of ancient lands. Stories from a time when dinosaurs with tails as big as whales towered over trees, birds had teeth, and super-fast sharks with saws for jaws swam through oceans and seas.
Earth’s amazing animals may be lost in time, but they are no longer forgotten.
From dinosaurs and sea beasts, to giant bugs, birds and Ice Age mammals, these spectacular species were once to be seen stomping, roaring, soaring and crawling across land, sky and sea – but are now extinct and lost forever.
In this beautifully illustrated follow-up to Secret Stories of Nature, you can uncover the fascinating histories of Earth’s most astounding extinct animals, from iconic beasts such as Tyrannosaurus rex, the woolly mammoth and the dodo, to jaw-dropping creatures such as a dragonfly-relative the size of a pigeon and a tiny sea beast that looked like a cartoon character.
When did giant bugs zoom through the skies and how did these creepy-crawlies become so colossal? Which dinosaurs had feathers and why is T. rex the most famous dinosaur of all time? How did mammals survive the giant asteroid? Which extinct animal had a boomerang-shaped head and which one was a mishmash of a bird, pig, crocodile and armoured armadillo? The answers to these secrets are waiting for you within!
You'll discover how scientists past and present have used research, observation and fossil records to piece these stories together and unravel their secrets. Intriguingly, some secrets are yet to be revealed, while others are rewritten when exciting new information changes what we think we know.
As well as discovering ancient animals, you can learn about beautiful beasts that have sadly been lost in recent years, but also the remarkable stories of animals once thought to be extinct – but which have been rediscovered.
Finally, at the back of the book you can learn how to help protect creatures that are critically endangered and their habitats. We can all work together to preserve our beautiful planet and its rich biodiversity!
The fascinating text from children’s author Saskia Gwinn is brought to life by gorgeously detailed, vintage-style artwork from Vasilisa Romanenko, making this a perfect gift book for the whole family to share.
Buried far beneath the ground are secret stories of ancient lands. Stories from a time when dinosaurs with tails as big as whales towered over trees, birds had teeth, and super-fast sharks with saws for jaws swam through oceans and seas.
Earth’s amazing animals may be lost in time, but they are no longer forgotten.
From dinosaurs and sea beasts, to giant bugs, birds and Ice Age mammals, these spectacular species were once to be seen stomping, roaring, soaring and crawling across land, sky and sea – but are now extinct and lost forever.
In this beautifully illustrated follow-up to Secret Stories of Nature, you can uncover the fascinating histories of Earth’s most astounding extinct animals, from iconic beasts such as Tyrannosaurus rex, the woolly mammoth and the dodo, to jaw-dropping creatures such as a dragonfly-relative the size of a pigeon and a tiny sea beast that looked like a cartoon character.
When did giant bugs zoom through the skies and how did these creepy-crawlies become so colossal? Which dinosaurs had feathers and why is T. rex the most famous dinosaur of all time? How did mammals survive the giant asteroid? Which extinct animal had a boomerang-shaped head and which one was a mishmash of a bird, pig, crocodile and armoured armadillo? The answers to these secrets are waiting for you within!
You'll discover how scientists past and present have used research, observation and fossil records to piece these stories together and unravel their secrets. Intriguingly, some secrets are yet to be revealed, while others are rewritten when exciting new information changes what we think we know.
As well as discovering ancient animals, you can learn about beautiful beasts that have sadly been lost in recent years, but also the remarkable stories of animals once thought to be extinct – but which have been rediscovered.
Finally, at the back of the book you can learn how to help protect creatures that are critically endangered and their habitats. We can all work together to preserve our beautiful planet and its rich biodiversity!
The fascinating text from children’s author Saskia Gwinn is brought to life by gorgeously detailed, vintage-style artwork from Vasilisa Romanenko, making this a perfect gift book for the whole family to share.
64 pages, Hardcover
Published May 20, 2025
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Displaying 1 - 1 of 1 review
September 29, 2026
In this case, you CAN judge a book by its cover because it's beautiful and the whole book is really aesthetically a treat and has a sort of timeless quality to it. That said, it's also rather depressing because so many of these beasts are not the dinosaurs that feel so far removed from our present reality nor was their demise a cataclysmic natural event. Here we meet not just beasts from ancient history but form modern times. Lo, the Tasmanian Tiger, which has broken my heart since I was a kid -- my son's, too -- I remember seeing the photograph of one when I was small and realizing, wow, that animal was alive at the time humans were able to take photos and now... gone forever. The Japanese sea lion, the West African black rhino, the Xerces blue butterfly and Paradise parrot... solemn reminders that humans have caused the extension of so many creatures and we must remain vigilant and work to save those that remain. I do appreciate that it ends with "Almost Lost Beasts" as a reminder that sometimes creatures thought to be extinct are actually not. Minus a star because there is no Bibliography -- boo.
Displaying 1 - 1 of 1 review