PALEO SHARKS

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)