Prehistoric Life

See And Explore

by Steve Parker

These gorgeously illustrated titles are a wonderful reference for older readers. More than 200 full-color images per title are matched with clear and extensive captioning.

Hardcover

First published March 15, 1993

About the author

Steve Parker is a British science writer known for producing hundreds of children's and adult nonfiction books covering zoology, medicine, evolution, and natural history. Educated at the University of Wales, Bangor, where he earned first class honours in zoology, he later worked at the Natural History Museum and held editorial positions at Dorling Kindersley before becoming a freelance author during the late 1980s. Parker contributed early titles to the acclaimed Eyewitness series and later wrote award-winning books including Science Crazy, Fizzing Physics, The Human Body Book, and Kill or Cure. He has also edited major collaborative works on evolution and medicine, regularly visits schools and libraries, and serves as a Senior Scientific Fellow of the Zoological Society of London.

Reviews

[Ryan]

Books like these are classified as Juvenile Reference, yet this is a broad category and they range from simple picture books with a few sentences per page, to full blown thick reference titles crammed with tiny text, diagrams and images. From the heyday in the 1980s and 90s they have since evolved from hand drawn illustrations that range from cartoony to realistic, to being increasingly (and unfortunately) replaced by photographs and sometimes computer graphics. This particular title has some of the most beautiful and well done drawings, done in the realistic style, filled with double page spreads depicting extinct fauna and flora from the Cambrian to the Pleistocene. It strikes a good balance between text and images, without the former crowding out the latter. A true treasure from the past, now a relic from bygone days.