Megabugs and Other Prehistoric Critters That Roamed the Planet

Can you imagine being out for a walk and encountering a dragonfly having a wingspan of 76 cm (2 ft. 6 in)? To do so, you would have had to have lived some 300 million years ago, but today’s much smaller dragonflies and damselflies are its modern descendants.

Becker’s work features seven large arthropods that swam, walked or flew during the Paleozoic era (542-251 million years ago), and she orders them from the oldest, the Aegirocassis (EE-gear-o-KA-sis) that lived some 480-478 million years ago, to the youngest, the Meganeuropsis (MEH-guh-ner-OP-sis) whose heyday occurred 290 million years ago. Though Becker does use the arthropods’ scientific names, she also gives them characterizing nicknames which the book’s readers will more likely recall: the Dangler, Spy, Paddler, Pincher, Stinger, Slitherer and Flier.

Megabugs and Other Prehistoric Critters That Roamed the Planet is rich both visually and factually. Though readers will undoubtedly want to jump right to the creature pages, hopefully they will stop on the “HOW OLD IS EARTH?” spread where Becker provides a timeline which situates the book’s contents in terms of the planet’s history.

Each of the seven megabugs is treated via a two-page spread with one of Bindon’s full-colour illustrations occupying the top two-thirds of both pages. The illustration is separated from the text by a horizontal timeline of the Paleozoic era divided into its six periods with the period in which the creature lived being highlighted.

The text on the left page consistently consists of three parts with the first being a comparison diagram labelled “HOW BIG COULD THEY GROW” in which a silhouette of a 140 cm (4 ft. 7 in.) child is compared to that of the pages’ focal arthropod. And so the diagram involving the Arthropleura, which Becker has nicknamed “The Slitherer”, sees the 260 cm (8 ft. 6 in.) dwarfing the child.

The next text portion is a chart that, in addition to providing a phonetic guide to how to pronounce the arthropod’s scientific name, provides point form information under six headings. For example:

Arthropleura AR-throw-PLOO-ruh)

Name meaning: jointed rib

Number of species: 6

Habitat: swamps and rain forests

Fave snack: swamp plants

Survival strategy: “the leg hold”

Modern relatives: millipedes

A map showing where fossils of the target critter have been found completes the information found on the left page. Arthropleura fossils, for example, have been located in Canada, the USA, the Netherlands, Scotland, Germany and France.

More detailed information about the focal arthropod is presented in a two-column format on the right page. Additionally, one large and one small text box is overlaid on Bindon’s illustration. The small one for “The Slitherer” explains that it “may have fed on lycophytes, a type of green plant that was common during the Carboniferous period” while the larger box, containing a graph showing the percentage of oxygen in the atmosphere between 600 and 100 million years ago, illustrates a text point that this creature lived (and grew) during the period when “oxygen levels in the atmosphere had hit an all-time high.”

Becker completes the work with a spread highlighting three “Giants of Today”, the Japanese spider crab, the giant huntsman spider of Australia, and the giant burrowing cockroach, also resident in Australia. End matter includes “A Note on the Illustrations”, a glossary, “Further Reading” and an index.

Fans of dinosaur books may switch allegiance when they encounter Megabugs and Other Prehistoric Critters That Roamed the Planet. A book for all school and public libraries.