Coats of arms and flags depicting scorpions, exotic turbans and caps, hooked noses, red hair, scarlet-red, black or even blue faces, unnaturally twisted postures, obscene gestures and viciously aggressive grimaces. Many signs were used in the art of the m

This book is about palaeontology, the only science showing who the ancestors of the various creatures that inhabit the Earth today were. Not long ago, we had no idea that whales were descended from the even-toed ungulates, birds from dinosaurs, and beetles and spiders - through many intermediate stages - from worms with proboscis and small claws on their soft legs. Yes, molecular biology can explain who’s relative it is, and prove that birds are closer to crocodiles than to turtles, and whales closer to hippos than to bears. But what did these bird-crocodiles or whale-behemoths look like? All creations were constantly changing, all organisms were actually the transitional forms and looked quite different from what one might assume when studying the modern wildlife. It is impossible to cover all of these forms in one book, but we will try to tell you about the most interesting ones.