This beautifully illustrated book begins in western Canada, where a hiker found the remains of a huge marine reptile. So who do you call? The Royal Tyrrell Museum of Palaeontology in Alberta. But the writer doesn’t stop in Alberta. Enormous reptiles called ichthyosaurs, plesiosaurs, and mosasaurs swam the seas from Canada to Antarctica and their fossilized bones have been found and studied by scientists. This book introduces readers to the Mesozoic Era (the age of the reptiles) and the sea’s inhabitants. Find out about the creatures’ anatomy, the food they ate, the way they cared for their young, their habitat, and the scientists who found them.

This book is about all the marine reptiles from the time of the dinosaurs. I liked the illustration on the cover; it made the book look like a good read. In fact, the pictures were the best part. My favourite types of marine reptile were the plesiosaurs. There was a cool picture of them.

I learned a lot from this book. For example, people think that about 100 million years ago, Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba were completely under water. I was also amazed at how big the reptiles were. Some of them ate rocks from the ocean bottom to help with their digestion. I thought that was weird.

The part I liked least, however, was the number of descriptions of the different marine reptiles. It was hard to remember them all.

The book was interesting, fun, and easy to read. The author gave the correct pronunciation of each creature’s name, which was helpful. Overall, I thought the book was good. Out of 10, I give it a score of 9.

(Originally published in the Nov/Dec 2007 issue of YES Mag.)