Animals of the Past

Monsters once walked here, and left their bones to prove it. Frederic Lucas, longtime director at America's great natural history museums, wrote this classic tour of vanished life: mammoths in the ice, sea serpents that were real, giant birds, and the dinosaurs then newly astonishing the world. He explains how fossils form, how skeletons are read, and how extinct worlds are rebuilt bone by bone, all in clear, friendly prose. Vintage paleontology with timeless wonder at its heart. Step into the fossil hall and hear the deep past speak.