Finding Life: A Prehistoric Search and Find

About this book

Earth formed about 4.5 billion years ago. Beginning as a ball of molten rock, it slowly cooled, and formed a crust. Gases surrounded the planet; volcanoes exploded; meteors and comets crashed into Earth, bringing ice with them. Over time, the ice cooled, and microorganisms appeared in the water.  

Slowly, those microorganisms evolved into creatures like jellyfish and sponges. When minerals washed into the seas, those soft-bodied lifeforms started to grow shells and skeletons, and, after another very long time, some of them made their way onto land. Millions of years later, humans evolved. 

Organised into thirteen historical periods, from the Cambrian to the Holocene, and with an extra section detailing the Fossil Record, Finding Life is so much more than a search and find book. On each double page spread, Williams outlines the characteristics of each epoch in a couple of paragraphs of accessible text, and then gives the reader a list of creatures to spot in her beautiful illustrations. There’s a detailed glossary at the end of which creatures were present in which era, too. 

This is a beautifully illustrated and created book, perfect for curious kids who are interested in archaeology or dinosaurs. The text size is quite small and there are, as ever with dinosaur books, many long dino names that even adults would find difficult to pronounce, meaning that this is best suited for upper primary readers.