[.ca] Sea Dragons: Predators of the Prehistoric Oceans (ISBN 0700613943)

not as good as his other stuff:
I read "Monsters of the Sea" and "Search for the Giant Squid" by Mr. Ellis and was expecting the same great read. I was disapointed. Slow, and far too technical. I am still hacking my way slowly through the last few chapters. Read those other titles first!

Sea Dragons: Predators of the Prehistoric Oceans:
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.

Repetitive, repetitive, repetitive problems!!!:
Downrated to 3 stars because the author is too repetitive. Although I enjoyed this book, the author repeats the same information several times in the course of a few pages (eg. discussion of tetrapod anapsid versus diapsid skull morp\ohology, lifestyles of ichythosaurs, etc). The fact that the each major chapter was reviewed independently really shows. Taxonomy and other topics are treated well and the author writes reasonably well.

Regretfully mediocre:
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.

Going for a swim?:
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 \obetter known as the Bear Paw Sea\c. 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 \oif they didn't see you!\c, 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 \op. 212\c 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. \ostephen a. haines - Ottawa, Canada\c