There are plenty of animals that used to exist on Earth that seem like they aren’t real, but they once were. Kids who love dinosaurs and other ancient creatures will enjoy Secret Stories of Lost Beasts: A Field Guide to Uncover Earth’s Ancient Animals by Sasika Gwinn, illustrated by Vasillia Romanenko.
The book is designed like a field guide showing different extinct animals with detailed illustrations and a paragraph about each one. Here you’ll find:
- amphibians
- reptiles
- dinosaurs
- sea beasts
- mammals
- Ice Age mammals
- bugs
- birds
Readers will learn about animals like beezlebufo, or the devil frog, who lived alongside dinosaurs and may have been the heaviest frog who ever lived; staganolepis, a plant-eating, bony scaled reptile with a tail like a crocodile and a snout like a pig; mamenchisaurus, thought to have the longest neck of any dinosaur; the Tully monster, a creature so confusing scientists aren’t sure was a vertebrate or invertebrate; juramaia, the oldest known mammal ancestor that gave birth to live young; glytopdons, which looked like giant armadillos; animals of the Bering land bridge like woolly mammoth, Irish elk and giant sloths; the giant dragonfly meganeura monyi; birds with teeth like the woodpecker-like enanttiophoenix; big birds like the giant auk and Tasmanian emu; among many others.
Additional text includes information on things like the giant asteroid, carboniferous forests, the time period known as the great dying, and more.
In the back of the book you’ll find a timeline for these creatures and more recently lost animals, as well as a few endangered species like the deer-like silver-backed chevrotain.
Kids who love animals, especially dinosaurs and other prehistoric animals that are extinct, are sure to enjoy looking at the pictures in this book and learning more about these strange animals that seem like something out of legend. If you want to see if your dino-loving kid’s interests can expand to other animals, this might just be the book to do it.
About the book: 64 pages, hardcover. Published 2025 by Wide Eyed Editions. Suggested retail price $24.99.
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