Review by Booklist Review
An intelligent, handsomely designed look at the ancient fish that are the forerunners of today's efficient predator, the shark. The text is built in double-page spreads, starting with What is a shark? The question is answered in a burst of text and an illustration of a shark with bits of information lined to its various parts: eyes, sensors, teeth. One or two ancient sharks are described per spread: a sidebar connects them to contemporary sharks, and a diagram shows their size relative to a human diver. Some of these creatures, known only from fossil remains, are extremely odd, such as Edestus, which apparently had a middle row of teeth that could extend out like a spiked tongue, or the Helicoprion with the buzz-saw jaw--a spiral of teeth. Bradley uses bright colors and hard edges to delineate the best informed guesses as to what these sharks might have looked like. A glossary and bibliography are appended. --GraceAnne DeCandido Copyright 2007 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by School Library Journal Review
Gr 4-8-Sharks from the Paleozoic, Mesozoic, and Cenozoic eras have connections to current ocean dwellers. Diagrams show relative sizes of the ancient shark, great white shark, and human diver while dramatic illustrations often feature predators and prey. Bradley clearly explains what paleontologists can and can't deduce from fossil remains. (c) Copyright 2013. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Horn Book Review
(Intermediate) Sharks have been around for a very large part of Earth's history, in many shapes and sizes and all over the planet's oceans. Bradley's chronologic tour of extinct shark species employs a smart design and sharp graphics to tie together the encyclopedia-like entries. Each two-page layout includes one or two profiles of sharks; an additional text box that discusses a related animal, plant, or modern-day equivalent; and a helpful to-scale comparison of each shark with the modern-day great white shark and a human diver. Well-chosen facts highlight all that we find so fascinating about sharks: their size, fierceness, and sometimes extraordinary features. In the accompanying artwork, sharks sport colorful stripes, spots, and other markings. While we don't know what colors the sharks actually were, Bradley is careful to explain that the brightly colored ocean inhabitants of today provide some basis for his interpretations. Additional information about today's sharks, a glossary, further reading, and a bibliography are appended. (c) Copyright 2010. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
Free of gore, but replete with scenes of large, toothy predators eyeing, or sometimes rushing directly at viewers, this introduction to extinct sharks and their relatives is a definite goosebump-raiser. Billing sharks as "one of the greatest success stories of life on Earth," and scattering deliciously hard-to-pronounce names--Cladoselache, Spathobathis, Sclerorhynchus--liberally through the short passages of text, Bradley mentions what little is known about each predator, but also points out possible or probable parallels in modern species. He groups his fishy fiends by era, going for drama over meticulous detail in depicting them attacking prey or cruising past contemporaneous sea life and adding on each spread to-scale silhouettes of a human diver and a modern great white for comparison. Capped by an all-too-close look at the Cenozoic era's ridiculously immense Carcharodon Megalodon, here's a riveting addition to the dinosaur shelves. Take off design points, though, for placing art and information under the jacket flaps. (glossary, further reading, bibliography) (Nonfiction. 8-10) Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
