Customer Reviews

Sea Dragons: Predators of the Prehistoric Oceans

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

The next time you're setting up a putt on the ninth hole at Smoky Hill Country Club in Hays, Kansas, pause a moment. Glance around you at the arid hills and scattered vegetation. It's difficult to comprehend that where you're standing was once under hundreds of metres of sea water. Millions of years in the past most of what is now central North America lay beneath the great Niobrara Sea [better known as the Bear Paw Sea]. Nor would you feel lonely - it was inhabited by all manner of creatures. However, some of these rivalled in size and ferocity the great land-dwelling dinosaurs of the same period. Richard Ellis has started to fill a long-standing gap in revealing how these creatures likely lived. And perhaps why they are no longer with us.

Ancient marine reptiles developed to immense sizes and bizarre shapes. Ellis focusses on the four major types, all of which had one commonalty - size. After a brief lesson on nomenclature and a dismissal of the Loch Ness enigma, he goes on to introduce us to some true monsters. And gargantuan they are! The fossils found in Britain and Belgium almost two centuries ago amazed the world with their likely size. Those revealed since, many from around Hays, Kansas, achieve lengths of up to twenty metres. In line with their massive bodies, some bore impressive dental equipment, with some teeth achieving twenty centimetres in length. Seeking prey at depth, they developed eyes the size of dinner plates. These were formidable creatures, indeed.

Ellis compiles fossil evidence to develop a picture of marine reptile lifestyles. They were all predators, but shape, locomotion and capacity for diving to extreme depths combined to focus on particular niches. Some must have been a glorious sight [if they didn't see you!], literally "flying" through the water like penguins. Others undulated their bodies like snakes, although, as Ellis states, no snakes were present in the seas at the time. The ichthyosaurs seem to have resembled tunas in shape and motion. The most extraordinary were the long-necked plesiosaurs who may have been bottom feeders. The range of body types and swimming styles is a reflection of the long period of their dominance. They were successful enough to have occupied the full extent of the world's oceans of the time.

There are a few quirks in this book the general reader should note. These reptiles maintained an imposing set of food processors and there's a challenge in demonstrating many factors in but one illustration. As Ellis notes often, how they appeared and how they lived relies much on what they ate. But, unlike the many illustrations he provides for dramatic effect, they didn't cruise the seas mouths agape. That's for fish with gills, not air-breathing reptiles. There's some irony in the illustration [p. 212] depicting a mosasaur swimming closed-mouthed, but bending its neck in a manner no large reptile with only seven vertebrae could achieve. These are, of course, minor issues and detract little from Ellis presentation. Still, as a learning resource for the non-paleontologists among us, it was incumbent on Ellis to use his wealth of information accurately. [stephen a. haines - Ottawa, Canada]

This is the first book I know that describes the whole variety of mesozoic marine life in a, for the averagely interested as well as experts, very clear and understandable manner. In four sections Ellis reflects the latest information on nearly all species of Ichthyosaurs, Plesiosaurs, Pliosaurs and Mosasaurs combined with a lot of outstanding life reconstructions (done by Ellis himself). The text is free of speculation but full of scientific background because Ellis frequently includes the latest inputs from the leading experts. What the book also makes very enjoyable is the fact, that the book is free of difficult technical jargon but gives a lot of references for people that are looking for these technical details. The style and print quality of the book is also very good.
In summary one can say confidently that this book is the best popularized book on mesozoic marine life available

I wish that I could be at all as enthusiastic in my evaluation of Sea Dragons as were those who wrote the dust jacket blurbs. I do not find Mr. Ellis's writing riveting, vivid and delightful, or readable and accessible. Sea Dragons managers to be both superficial and prolix. I find it poorly organized, diffuse, and repetitious, and I can only recommend it to someone who is desperately enamored with the Mesozoic Era.

Ellis is an excellent artist, but his black and white illustrations are often not well posed to show the particular features he discusses in his text. There are few detail drawings to show the particularities of form, bone structure, dentition, or skin that he mentions. A few drawings look to be at odds with his text.

Ellis's text includes pairs of sentences where the second repeats the first with minor modification or elaboration as if he intended to discard the first but didn't. There are paragraphs that are dustbins of assorted sentences with no topic. There are paragraphs that change topic in mid stream. There are collections of paragraphs with neither topic sentences nor transitions between paragraphs. Sideshows are numerous and only wander back to the main topic with difficulty. Ellis uses long footnotes that should have been incorporated into the text. He does provide good translations for many of the species names.

Most technical areas of anatomy or cladistics are dealt with by quoting a jargon-filled paragraph, noting its incomprehensibility to lay readers, and skipping on to something else. Ellis notes opposing viewpoints but does little to clarify which is to be preferred or why. There are no cladograms or old-style trees of proposed descent whatsoever. No group of Sea Dragons is dealt with in any specific order. There is very little paleoenvironmental information to make clear why a given animal is said to have lived in a particular setting, and only one or two illustrations supply any such information.

Many of these problems might be attributed to inadequate editing. Sea Dragons is the first book I've read in ages that contains misspelled words as opposed to spell-checked misuses. The organizational and editing problems can be seen most obviously where Ellis discusses the mosasaur Globidens, a supposed bivalve-eating creature with rounded teeth. Globidens is mentioned five different times on different pages, but in detail with an illustration only the last time. At that point we are reminded that the ichthyosaur Grippia was also a presumed shellfish eater, but in the previous mention of Grippia, one hundred and forty-some pages earlier in the proper section on ichthyosaurs (Ellis truly loves ichthyosaurs; they turn up in every section), we were told twice only where Grippia was found. In the last section, Ellis first has plesiosaurs going extinct with the ichthyosaurs 20 million years before the K-T asteroid strike, then two pages later has them going extinct "around the K-T boundary," "about 65 million years ago." These would be small matters if they were isolated occurrences, but they are not.

Ellis includes the obligatory attack against creationists in the middle of his section on ichthyosaurs. Creationists have such problems with truth and accuracy and there are so many obvious points on which to criticize the ludicrous nature of their views that it is embarrassing to have Ellis pointlessly write that "here we will assume quite the opposite" when his disorganization and omissions obscure the evidence for evolution marine reptiles do provide. Assumptions aren't good enough to overcome willful ignorance.

Sea Dragons desperately needs a listing in each section of the species/genera discussed and those placed on a graph with location on one axis and time on the other. A side-by-side listing of European and North American geological divisions with radiometric dates should be included. The illustrations need a scale bar or human figure for comparison.

For younger readers, certainly not Ellis's target audience, I would recommend any of David Norman's books that touch on marine reptiles, recognizing that he has little to say on Mosasaurs.
For adult readers, Christopher McGowan's Dinosaurs, Spitfires, & Sea Dragons or Richard Cowen's History of Life provide a more cogent though far briefer account of these truly great dragons of the seas. For those willing to brave the terminology and jargon, Ancient Marine Reptiles, Jack M. Callaway and Elizabeth L. Nicholls, eds., remains the most informative volume.

Sea Dragons: Preators of the Prehistoric Oceans written by Richard Ellis is a wonderful book. This is the first book to present a detailed summary of the history on marie reptile paleontology. This book is well-written and vivid and delightfully illustrated.

"Sea Dragons" chronicles a lesser-known but equally magnificent group of megafauna... those remarkable giants that swam our oceans in the great Mesozoic era. In that era when dinosaurs dominated the earth, there were marie counterparts, every bit as big and mean.

The contents of the book takes us on an overview of marie reptiles then we get into the heart of the book.

The Ichthyosaurs
The Plesiosaurs
The Plisaurs
The Mosasaurs

Each of these sections are very detailed and are wonderfully written and very understandable with illustrations to show the reader what the author is writing about. Although these marie reptiles are merely fosilized bone now, it is not difficult to flesh them out in our minds and see this tableau as a representation of what may have taken place when the world was 150 million years younger than it is now.

Many of the descriptions of the creatures in this book, all of which are extinct, and all of which are known only from fossils, consist primarily of osteological terminology. Osteology is the study of bomes. What I found interesting was that even the size of the eye, so critical of the differentation of various ichthyosaur genera, relies largely on the circle of bony plates in the eye socket known as the sclerotic ring.

Throughout the discussion of the marine reptiles in this book the author cites the various chronological periods making for good reference points for the reader as to how long ago these creatures existed. All in all, this is a well-compiled work and is very easy to understand.

I enjoyed this book and gave it a solid 5 star rating for its ease of readability and the logical way it was written. This book would make an excellent addition to your home library as it explains about life in the Mesozoic ear.

Acclaimed marine illustrator and author Richard Ellis offers a splendid, long-overdue look on Mesozoic marine reptiles in his latest book, "Sea Dragons: predators of the prehistoric oceans". This is a slightly technical book that is aimed for those in the general public already familiar with Mesozoic vertebrate paleobiology after reading books from the likes of Robert Bakker, Gregory Paul and others. Ellis excels in incorporating the latest research on these extinct denizens of Mesozoic seas, often opting to quote directly from the published papers of the authors themselves. He begins with a splendid critique of the so-called "Loch Ness Monster", reminding us that it was a hoax perpetrated by several enthusiastic British in 1934. Then he offers a brief overview of the real monsters of the Mesozoic. In subsequent chapters he offers extensive overviews of Ichtyosaurs, Plesiosaurs, Pliosaurs, and Mosasaurs. Last, but not least, he muses on the nature of extinction, trying to explain why these elegant creatures - the marine counterparts of the nonavian dinosaurs - became extinct. My only criticism - and it is a relatively minor one - is Ellis's failure to describe phylogenetic systematics - better known to both its practitioners and critics as cladistics - which he refers to repeatedly in his technical descriptions of these creatures. Still, this is an important general overview of Mesozoic marine life which shouldn't be missed by those interested in Mesozoic vertebrate paleobiology.

There is a great deal of information regarding the life of prehistoric aquatic reptiles. Unfortunately, these amazing creatures have always been relegated to a single chapter in the majority of dinosaur-oriented books (No, these creatures were not dinosaurs, nor were they related to them). Or the most in-depth publications were steeped in the literature of scientific texts.

Richard Ellis, like Robert Bakker and Carl Zimmer, has opened the door for the rest of us. Through this great book he is allowing us-- the average reader with an interest in the sciences-- to be a part of that world. His book is a total compendium that describes all the major families of these reptiles: Icthyosaurs, Mosasaurs, Pliosaurs, and of course that perennial candidate for the Loch Ness Monster, the Plesiosaurs.

Thank you, Richard Ellis. I love this book!

This book has no real peer at the moment. Indeed, a comprehensive, detailed, but easily understandable book on marine reptilian predators of the Mesozoic has been long awaited, and overdue. These animals approached whales in size in some instances, and easily dwarfed their terrestrial counterparts. Indeed, a T Rex may have been only one eighth the size of the largest pliosaurs. Yet, most books on Mesozoic life have, until now, relegated these marvelous animals to one or two back chapters or sections at the most.

Author Ellis, a renowned illustrator, writer, and researcher, has produced a masterpiece. His drawings of these seagoing reptiles are impeccable, if sometimes a bit speculative, and enable the reader to capably visualize these gigantic creatures.
Likewise, the text is enormously informative, not only about such FAQ's as size, weight, methods of reproduction, etc., but also on more arcane matters, such as how these huge beasts propelled themselves quickly and efficiently through the water. One glance at a long-necked, flippered plesiosaurus reveals that the answer to this problem is far from simple.

After an excellent introduction, the author covers icthyosaurs, plesiosaurs, pliosaurs, and mosasaurs in turn. Ellis then concludes with what seems to be the mandatory conclusion to any Mesozoic book; i.e., what caused all of these fabulously efficient, dominant predators to disappear in one fell swoop.

I found this book enormously enjoyable, and it was one of my best Christmas presents in years. I shall read it again and again. Anyone with a high school background will enjoy this book to the hilt, and my recommendation is extremely high.

By the way, this is the sort of book one loans out only very carefully.

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.

_Sea Dragons_ is a companion volume to author Richard Ellis' earlier work on the evolution of life in the sea, _Aquagenesis_. During the course of research for the earlier book, he uncovered so much material about Mesozoic marine reptiles that he made a decision to actually leave them out for the most part. He wrote that the material for _Sea Dragons_ came from the "scrap heap," a statement I find remarkable as they are among the most interesting - arguably the most "charismatic" - extinct marine organisms ever. I also think this book is better written, researched, and illustrated than _Aquagenesis_.

The first section of the book provided an introduction to Mesozoic marine reptiles in general, detailing the history of research into these animals and briefly detailing some extinct marine reptiles that are not explored in greater detail later, notably the mesosaurs (marine reptiles up to 3 feet long that lived in the Permian, about 300 million years ago), sea turtles (including extinct species), nothosaurs (Triassic animals that may be ancestral to plesiosaurs and possibly had a seal-like ecological niche), and placodonts (somewhat turtle like reptiles that fed on shellfish). The idea of endothermic marine reptiles is discussed, Ellis noting that not only marine mammals and birds are endothermic but also that several species of fast-swimming pelagic sharks and tuna as well as the leatherback turtle maintain temperatures higher than the waters in which they swim. Also whether or not marine reptiles were viviparous (meaning they bore live young rather than laid eggs) or not is discussed, a subject explored at greater length with each group in its respective chapter.

The first group of animals explored at length is the ichthyosaurs, a remarkable group who bear a great deal of resemblance in form to fast swimming shark, dolphin, and tuna species. They were a group of marine reptiles that were highly adapted to a marine existence, existing from the early Triassic (about 250 million years ago) and perishing well before the end of the Cretaceous (about 93 million years ago). Their ancestors a mystery, early ichthyosaurs were long and slim, somewhat eel-like in form, though later species were highly streamlined. The group is fairly well known, with one locale in Holzmaden, Germany, yielding about 35 ichthyosaurs a year and having produced all told over 3,000 specimens; from these and other fossil sites we know that they gave birth to live young and it is highly unlikely that they possessed echolocation but instead were highly dependent upon vision. Ellis reviewed many ichthyosaur species, notably _Shonisaurus_ (at 50 feet the largest described ichthyosaur to date though Ellis noted that an undescribed specimen from British Columbia is 75 feet long) and _Temnodontosaurs_ (a 30 foot long species with eyes 9 inches across, the largest eyes of any animal that ever lived).

Next Ellis examined the plesiosaurs, a group that is found from the uppermost Triassic to the very end of the Cretaceous (they were around for about 140 million years). Completely unlike ichthyosaurs in form, they possessed long necks with small heads (one species, _Elasmosaurus_, had a neck 47 feet long with 70 neck vertebrae). Much of his chapter on this group noted the many controversies that surround them. How they swam is subject to a great dealt of debate; did they paddle (the limbs moving in the vertical plane, like a human doing a crawl stroke or the movement of a waterwheel in a mill), row (moving in the horizontal plane, in a manner similar to how oars are used on a boat), or "fly" (the limbs moving roughly in a figure-eight pattern, much like modern sea turtles, sea lions, and penguins; and if they did fly did they have two "wings" in use or four)? Did they lay eggs or bear live young? How did they hunt; did they hunt from the surface or well beneath it and what sort of motions were their necks capable of?

The next group are the pliosaurs, a group that some feel is somewhat artificial, either believing the distinction between small-headed, long-necked plesiosaurs and large-headed, short-necked pliosaurs artificial to start with or noting that the pliosaur body plan may have arisen independently several times from ancestral plesiosaurs during the Mesozoic. This group possessed some of the largest predators ever, notably _Liopleurodon_ (most believing it 50 feet in length though Tim Haines, author of the book _Walking With Dinosaurs_ and producer of the BBC TV program of the same name was accused by others of being "irresponsible and sensationalistic" in claims that it was over 80 feet long). Ellis noted several remarkable specimens, such as a pliosaur (_Leptocleidus_) from Australia, "Eric," an almost complete skeleton comprised entirely of precious opal, and one dubbed by detractors "Plasterosaurus," a _Kronosaurus_ specimen that required massive amounts of reconstruction and liberal use of plaster.

The last group examined is the mosasaurs, a kind of marine lizard that appeared in the fossil record 90 million years ago. Not exactly small-sized animals (_Mosasaurus_ reached 58 feet in length), they were arguably the dominant marine predator for about 25 million years, existing after the extinction of the ichthyosaurs (some say there is a connection, though others think that faster, more evasive fish evolved, making ichthyosaur pursuit tactics to metabolically costly and that mosasaurs were ambush not pursuit predators) and during the decline of the pliosaurs. Like the ichthyosaurs, the mosasaurs are relatively well known with many fossils from locations as far apart as Africa, Belgium, Alabama, and Kansas (the Niobrara Chalk formation of Kansas has yielded 1,823 mosasaur specimens, many of which were collected by O.C. Marsh and E.D. Cope in a collecting and naming frenzy that produced such a taxonomic muddle that experts are still confused). I thought Ellis did a very good job in discussing mosasaur physiology and behavior as well as what evolutionary relationship they have (if any) with snakes and found this section particularly enlightening.

Not bad, some of the other reviews note the book's flaws better than I can.

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.