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| View Larger Image | Sea Dragons: Predators Of The Prehistoric Oceans
by Richard Ellis
| | List Price: | $19.95 | | Price: | $14.96 | | You Save: | $4.99 (25%) |  | | Available: | Usually ships in 2 to 4 weeks | | | | | Sales Rank: | 384140 | | Studio: | University Press of Kansas | | | Binding: | Paperback | | Number Of Pages: | 313 | | Publication Date: | April 25, 2005 | | Publisher: | University Press of Kansas |
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EDITORIAL REVIEWS |
Book Description
In the days when dinosaurs dominated the earth, their marine counterparts-every bit as big and ferocious-reigned supreme in prehistoric seas. In this entrancing book, Richard Ellis, one of the world's foremost writers on the denizens of the deep, takes us back to the Mesozoic era to resurrect the fascinating lives of these giant seagoing reptiles. Working from the fossil record, Ellis explores the natural history of these fierce predators, speculates on their habits, and tells how they eventually became extinct-or did they? He traces the 200-million-year history of the great ichthyosaurs, plesiosaurs, and mosasaurs who swam the ancient oceans-and who, according to some, may even still frequent the likes of Loch Ness. Picture if you will seventy-foot dragons with foot-long serrated teeth, or an animal that looked like a crocodile crossed with a shark the size of a small yacht. With its impossibly long neck, Plesiosaurus conybeari has been compared to "a giant snake threaded through the body of a turtle." At a length of nearly sixty feet, Mosasaurus hoffmanni boasted powerful jaws and teeth that could crunch up even the hardest-shelled giant sea turtle. And Kronosaurus queenslandicus, perhaps the most formidable of the lot, had a skull nine feet long-more than twice that of Tyrannosaurus rex-with teeth to match. The first book about these amazing animals in nearly a century, Sea Dragons draws upon the most recent scientific research to vividly reconstruct their lives and habitats. Their fossils have been found all over the world-in Europe, Australia, Japan, and even Kansas-in lands that once lay on the floors of Jurassic and Triassic seas. Along the way, the book also provides intriguing insights into and entertaining tales about the work, discoveries, and competing theories that compose the fascinating world of vertebrate paleontology. Ellis also graces his text with a set of incomparable illustrations. Widely hailed as our foremost artist of marine natural history, he depicts vividly how these creatures probably appeared and, through these likenesses, invites us to speculate on their locomotion, their predatory habits, their very lifestyles. A genuine book of marvels and wonders, Sea Dragons will certainly stir one's curiosity about our planet's prehistoric past. This book contains 51 black-and-white illustrations by the author. |
CUSTOMER REVIEWS (Average Customer Rating: 3.5 based on 15 reviews)
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Uneven and inconsistent 
Prehistoric life, especially during the time of the dinosaurs, is one of the larger categories of science literature in terms of books published annually. Hence there are a lot of good books out there to read, for all reading levels. This is not one of them. Richard Ellis is a respected author in the field of marine biology, and as a reader I expected more from this book. The book's subject is carnivorous marine reptiles that lived in the same period as the dinosaurs, so we are talking about mosasaurs, pliosaurs, plesiosaurs and ichthyosaurs. The book's chapters are divided among these major animal types. Each chapter provides a history of discoveries (fossil finds, scientific debates, and modeling) regarding each of these animals. By surveying the history, the author creates a picture of each animal, its life cycle, anatomy, evolution and probable demise. Therefore the mode of information presentation is good, but it is the execution that is lacking. For example, there are numerous lengthy quotes and references from other sources, and on some pages, these quotations can occupy a third of the text. By reading this, I get the feeling that the author has not done original research in this field, but is only summarizing what has been discovered by others. Another failing are the infrequent illustrations of poor quality. All are line drawings, with about one drawing every 5 - 7 pages. This is inadequate as each chapter devotes a lot of text discussing the various species discovered of each animal. Such a purpose deserves more illustrations of better quality, not only of whole animals, but of specific anatomical features. For example, the author could have provided color photos of different fossilized teeth from these marine reptiles, with captions describing how teeth shape is used to deduce feeding habits.
So all in all, I expected better from this book.
June 05, 2008 | |
"Sea Dragons Predators of the Prehistoric Oceans
Sea Dragons is not for everyone. I wanted to know more about these marine reptiles and the book helped me accomplish that goal. However at times, it was tough sledding! I had to persevere through many dry, dull, and confusing paragraphs to get there.
It seems to me that the author wrote the book as follows: he did an extensive literature search, took notes on 5 X 7 cards, sorted the cards by topic (kind of) and wrote the book from the card information. The result is a ton of detailed information but not without its problems. There are contradictions throughout the book. There are vast differences of opinion between the experts cited. They remain unresolved. The author seldom, if ever, weighs in to settle the disputes. Also, the technical jargon can be a huge obstacle to comprehension (at least for the layman readers). The author is keenly aware of this and tries to massage the problem. However he doesn't consistently do it nor does he always do it at the introduction of new terminology.(e.g., He never defined "pinniped" until after numerous pages of using the term).
It is hard to come away from this book with many generalizations about marine reptiles that seem firmly grounded. There is far too much equivication. For example, just how the marine reptiles used their four flippers to propel themselves is still a big mystery to me. The paleontologists can not seem to agree on this according to Ellis. Surely, some ranking of importance of the different theories could be made.
One observation I made and the author seems to have missed is the important difference in the tails of these creatures. The ichthyosaurs have a fishlike tail, the pleiosaurs and pliosaurs have a reptile-like tail (round in cross-section and tapered), and the mosasaurs have an oar-like tail. Knowing this, I can tell from the pictures, what the animal is.
The ichthyosaurs seemed to me to be the best adapted because they were most fishlike. Yet they went extinct first. The author says that new fish had evolved which ate the ichthyosaur young. Wouldn't those also be able to eat the plesiosaur, pliosaur and mosasaur young?
To the author I say, " You have done a lot of good goundwork but this book isn't finished. You need to thoroughly revise this book and deal with the contradictions, try to form some conclusions and generalizations from all the data, and do more to solve the jargon problem. The illustrations were vital. You need even more of them. Why? because the binomial names are meaningless babble without the picture of the animal. Also, provide some graphics to show order, family, genus and species of these animals. I can't see the forest for the trees.
Ralph Hermansen May 3, 2008
May 03, 2008 | |
I'd recomend looking for another book on the subject. 
Richard Ellis can't seem to decide who his target audience is in Sea Dragons Predators of the Prehistoric Ocean. He alternates between explaining fairly simple concepts in great detail and making passing reference to advanced biological concepts with little to no explanation. He spends several pages explaining why extinct prehistoric animals don't have common names like "the lion, tiger, blue whale, and so forth" clearly catering to the layperson. A few pages later he glosses over how enzymes can be used by a cold blooded animal to function in cold temperatures in a couple of paragraphs.
This book is really just a summery of what is known and the major theories about Mesozoic marine reptiles. The author only once draws his own conclusions and only twice endorses the conclusions of anyone else that he presents (he frequently illustrates the main points of argument between conflicting theories).
This is a fairly new book (2003) and yet many of the theories Ellis details are from the 19th century. A significant portion of the book in fact is dedicated to discussion of politics in paleontology in the Victorian era; mildly interesting to be sure but when given a choice between reading about some of the most fascinating creatures ever to live on this planet and reading about how Edward Drinker Cope and Othiniel Charles Marsh really, really didn't like each other I think I'm going to go with the Ichthyosaurs, Plesiosaurs, and Mosasaurs every time.
Sea Dragons suffers from a lack of organization. The book is broken up into an overview, chapters on Ichthyosaurs, Plesiosaurs, Pliosaurs, Mosasaurs, and extinction. There are many times when information appears in the wrong chapter. Almost half of the chapter on Pliosaurs is actually about Plesiosaurs. It makes sense for there to be some discussion of the relationships between these two groups since they are so closely related but more of a focus on Pliosaurs would have been nice. After anecdotes about Victorian paleontologists clobbering each other over the head to steal each others specimens and the rehashing of everything Plesiosaur there is very little discussion of actual Pliosaurs.
This problem is even worse in the Mosasaur chapter. It is the shortest chapter about a group of reptiles in the book and half of it is spent talking about snake evolution. This starts out with a discussion of the theory that snakes are descended from Mosasaurs. This is interesting and relevant the problem is instead of moving on to further discussion of Mosasaurs Ellis moves on to talk about many different theories on the origins of snakes and weather or not they could revolve limbs.
Another major organizational problem is Ellis's extensive use of foot notes. There are foot notes every few pages some times more than half a page in length. Minor clarifications are not the only things contained in these notes. Many times there are major points contained in the notes that really deserve to be included in the text. In addition to the foot note problems there are many misspelled words (I am quite possibly the worst speller in the world so if I'm noticing then it is bad) in general the book is poorly edited.
There are many conceptual illustrations in the book of fleshed out animals doing what they might have done but surprisingly few skeletal pictures. Most of the skeletal pictures are profiles with no detail. There is only one picture with any bones labeled, a skull of the Plesiosaur Cryptoclidus eurymerus. It is difficult to understand many things talked about in the book with out detailed skeletal drawings.
At one point Ellis demonstrates a lack of understanding of to how evolution works. In discussion of the aspect ratios of Plesiosaur flippers he says
"These creatures did not develop there particular aspect ratios so they could specialize in certain types of pray capture; rather, the flipper types evolved over time, and the animals developed attack strategies commensurate with their capabilities."
While it is certainly true that "flipper types evolved over time" his interpretations of changes in pray capture technique doesn't quite sit well with me. The way Ellis puts it sounds as if the flipper types evolved first and then these Plesiosaurs had to figure out how to hunt with their new fangled aspect ratios. Surely the flippers evolved along with hunting strategies with the most fit individuals passing on there genes gradually changing there form and behavior.
In his discussion of the end Cretaceous extinction Ellis makes one of his few conclusions in the book and he dose not support it well and it is not even about marine reptiles. He argues that dinosaurs where on the way out before the Chicxulub asteroid impact. The evidence he offers for this is extinction of many forms of dinosaurs late in the Jurassic and early in the Cretaceous. He neglects to mention that many of the spices he is talking about had there ecological niches filled by other dinosaurs during the Cretaceous. This is not to say that he might not be right about Dinosaurs being on their way out before the impact just that the evidence he offers doesn't support his argument.
This book is not all bad there is some very interesting discussion of Plesiosaur and Pliosaur locomotion. The chapter on Ichthyosaurs is very good even if Ellis dose spend a little too much time comparing them to dolphins.
I'm not sure I would recommend Sea Dragons to anyone it doesn't present anything new for the professional or serious student and doesn't explain things well enough for the casual reader.
July 08, 2007 | |
Not easy, but good 
As someone who's always had a particular interest in Mesozoic sea life, I checked out this book with no small haste. Ellis's artwork and writing are lucid; as always, he is careful to show of a scholarly argument. However, this book is definitely not for beginners; more so than some of his other work, it is heavy on anatomic and taxonomic details. Then again, it *is* about fossils, a subject in which there is little else to go on.
In his introduction, he states in so many words that he wanted to write the definitive text on Mesozoic "sea monsters", in a field with little popular literature, and to that effect I think he's fully succeeded. Definitely recommended for those willing to take the time with it.
June 08, 2006 | |
Stunned how bad it was
I was amazed at how bad this book was. The text is superficial and far too timid. It is disorganized, gets lost in disjointed storytelling rather following the subject and as other reviewers pointed out it gets repetitious, I think this is from his disorganization forcing him to cover the same ground over and over. Also when he quotes several professors to back up his argument and they discuss the same question it gets even more repetitious.
The main problems are;
1) Too many footnotes. When, as is true of much of the book, there is a footnote on every page, (and not just a little reference, they are in some places paragraphs long and lap over onto the succeeding page displacing the extensive footnote on that page), that's bad writing. Either the narrative is important enough to include in the body or it shouldn't be in the book. As a Technical Writing professor told me years ago. "Footnotes are for references. If it's over 3 lines you're probably doing it wrong".
2) He's way too timid. Rather than saying "the consensus is X" he gets lost quoting this researcher and that professor and the other paleontologist, getting all sides of each and every question. The trouble is that when you have several quotes all contradicting each other the reader is left not knowing what our real understanding of the topic is. In the cases where the several quotes agree it gets repetitious and boring. The author needs to get over his fear of being told he's wrong, put his supporting data in a citations table in the back and take a stand.
The only reason I finished this book was because I took it on a cruise and didn't have another.
April 21, 2006 | |
SIMILAR PRODUCTS |
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