I appreciate the publisher allowing me to read this book. I found this book incredibly interesting the author really kept me hooked until the end. very well written I highly recommend.

I love reading nonfiction focused on scientific topics, but often get worried that books will be too academic, or overly difficult for me to understand. While I love learning about paleontology and natural history, I don't have a science background at all, and am often intimidated by books on these topics. While I was a little hesitant for this one, I'd heard good things, and friends, it was absolutely incredible!

In Locked Time, Dr. Lomax writes about 50 different fossils that help shed light on prehistoric animals, and give insight to what their lives and behaviors may have been like. It was written in short snippets, similar to vignettes, where each fossil had it's time in the spotlight.

It's easy for scientists and researchers today to study different species -- we can watch them. But how are we supposed to know what dinosaurs, pre-historical mammals, or ancient marine life did while they were alive? In order to uncover clues, we need fossils, and even then, we only uncover whatever is preserved, and have to fill in the rest ourselves.

In this book, we get up close and personal with incredibly rare specimens: animals that died while mating, fighting, building nests, and more. We get to see how exactly they lived, and uncover mysteries about their daily lives, reproduction, migration, and more. These fossils revealed new information, and when compared to modern day cousins, helped fill in so many blanks and draw conclusions about pre-historic life.

Each snippet was also paired with images of the fossils and/or illustrations, that truly helped bring these creatures to life. Reading it gave me the same feelings I get while watching Planet Earth -- I felt a strange connection to these animals, and formed a deep respect for them.

I absolutely loved this book. It was full of so much information and fun facts, easy to read and understand, and presented incredible discoveries in a way that was accessible and fun to read about.

Thank you to the publisher, Columbia University Press, for sending me a digital ARC via NetGalley. Locked in Time came out on May 18, 2021.

i really appreciated learning a bit more about animals that we find in fossils. It was an interesting read and I appreciated that the author knew a lot about the topic.

At times rather too wordy and not necessarily the best for keeping the reader's attention, however I found this book intriguing though it had to be read in stops and starts.

An excellent, informative and engrossing book that made me learn a lot about animals that lived long time ago.
Using fossils the author bring them back to life making me feel as I could see them in a documentary.
The illustrations are great and I thoroughly enjoyed it.
Highly recommended.
Many thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for this ARC, all opinions are mine

When people think of fossils, typically they think of them simply showing us what the extinct creatures (usually dinosaurs when people hear “fossils”) looked like. They picture the fully reconstructed skeleton of a T-Rex, or the amazingly tall thigh bone of a Sauropod. IN Locked in Time, though, Dean Lomax offers up a series of vignettes detailing 50 remarkable fossils that show us so much more; they offer a glimpse into actual behavior divided into several broad sections: Sex; Parental Care and Communities; Moving and Making Homes; Fighting, Biting, and Feeding; Unusual Happenings (this last more of a miscellany).

The fossils show the creatures “caught in the act,” whether it be having sex, fighting, nesting, eating (and getting eaten), sleeping, and more. If you think about how much has to happen for us just to find any fossil, the idea that we have fossils of creatures actually performing such acts is truly mind-boggling, and Lomax nicely conveys the astonishment and joy at such discoveries, his enthusiasm clearly evident. He’s equally good on the science, always clear and offering up necessary context in concise, effective fashion. He also does a nice job of showing how science works, the way theories are developed and then confirmed or, if the evidence builds up showing otherwise, how those theories change to accept new data. As when, for example, “it had always been assumed the external fertilization was the primitive mode of reproduction for fish like those placoderms” but then fossils showed they instead “were among the first vertebrates to copulate and bear live young.” In the same vein, when the evidence still doesn’t clearly or irrefutably point in one direction, he’s upfront about letting the reader know that.

Beyond the fossils, which are fascinating in themselves, and Lomax’s excellent explanations of them, the book really shines in its artwork, with Bob Nicholls offering up a number of absolutely stunning illustrations. The book has a number of photographs of the actual fossils, but Nicholl’s illustrations bring the creatures truly alive. Seriously, the book is worth it for the artwork alone. Luckily, that’s not all you get. Highly recommended

Thoroughly researched and brilliantly written, Locked in Time tells the stories of some of the most unusual fossils ever found. From a fossilized pee hole to a snake eating a lizard eating a beetle, this book describes the behavioural information that can be gleaned from the study of fossils and how it can be correlated with the behaviour of modern animals. I highly recommend it to anyone who wants to learn more about dinosaurs and prehistoric creatures.

Received from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Holy cow I love this book. 50 extraordinary fossils? Heck yea I'm in!

This book is broken up into five sections. Each section begins with a discussion of the behavior followed by multiple fossil examples. A few of my favorites- Dinosaur Sex Dance, Megalodon Nursery, and Parasite Rex.

The illustrations are amazing. I spent quite a bit of time in my reading just looking at the detail in those drawings. I'm looking forward to having a hard copy in my classroom for this reason.

Thank you to Netgalley for the opportunity to review this book.

This was a very fascinating journey through the world of fossils and prehistoric animals. I knew of some of these amazing fossils but there was just so many that were new. This book also looks into the discovery, science, and stories that led to these finds and what they can tell you about the lives of the animals. I do recommend this book and hope for another book by this author.

10/10 stars

My full review can be found on my blog (link attached).

This time, I have something different for you: a journey through millions of years, full of wonderful, saddening, and/or quite creepy discoveries, and ranging from nearly the beginnings of fossil records to the time of the Ice Age. While probably most of us were at some point in our lives fascinated with dinosaurs, ammonites, mammoths and smilodons, not many chose this childhood fascination as their adult passion. Dean R. Lomax did, and both this fascination, and this passion, are clearly noticeable in his book, which is as entertaining as it is informative.

[...]

To be honest, I didn’t expect to be so beguiled by this book. I was first drawn to it because it promised illustrations of prehistoric animals in unusual situations (and yes, there’s even one memorable illustration of a pooping member of the extinct Borophaginae family, the bone-crushing dogs from North America, and another of a peeing diplodocus – and as a side note, I didn’t know ostriches pee!); I never expected it would rekindle my own fascination with paleontology and fossils. The illustrations by Robert Nicholls are great; they serve as companions to the cases described in the text, and make the accompanying photographs of fossils more evocative and more comprehensible, turning a jumble of bones into a poignant scene from the past. There’s an abundance of both the impeccable, large illustrations (sometimes spanning two pages) and the photographs, and I only regret that I didn’t have the physical book in my hands and had to resort to looking at the pictures on my phone.

But the illustrations are the companion piece; the text is what matters, and this text is both very approachable and easily understandable – clearly directed at the general audience – while remaining scientific. Moreover, it succeeds in imparting highly erudite, often unfamiliar knowledge on laypersons such as me. Lomax is an easy narrator, deftly weaving personal reminiscence and passion among the paleontological facts. It also helps that the facts he chooses are quite astonishing – varying from relatable to unusual or outright unique, from funny to disgusting, from those reminiscent of old tragedies to those showcasing moments of happy tenderness between animals extinct for millions of years.

Of course, with fossils there’s always a lot of room for conjectures and honest mistakes; our beliefs color the facts, especially when the facts are scarce. However, Lomax rarely strays from the path of confirmed, broadly accepted knowledge (at least among paleontologists; I bet many of these little snippets would be new to you!), and Locked in Time remains a scientific book at its heart – while being highly entertaining at the same time. We learn about dinosaur babysitters; fateful fights between a pteranodon and a predatory fish; mammals hunting dinosaurs; dinosaurs with cancer; enormous snakes feasting on tiny sauropod hatchlings; resting and sleeping theropods; evidence of ancient social behavior forever encased in stone; giant burrowing sloths bigger than elephants; even some hair-rising parasites (such as aptly named Xenomorphia resurrecta, a parasitic wasp, whose larvae developed inside fly pupae, eating them alive) and insect farts immortalized in amber. Yes, there is a lot of information about bodily functions of various creatures in this book, clearly certain fascinations stay with some people longer than with others. But, to be fair, you’re bound to get bonus points if you ever use that knowledge in conversations with kids (any kids, really, don’t have to be yours)!

My my, my repertoire of awkward starts to social conversations just got so much bigger! 😀

I had a blast with this book. It’s a wonderful reminder for those who like me had been bitten by the fossil/dinosaur bug in their childhood, but it’s also a great starting point for those who feel that paleontology might be interesting and yet are afraid of the dry scientific language of most adult paleobiology books. Also, if you’re tempted to read more, Locked in Time offers a nice bibliography at the end.

And a last quote, one that very aptly summarizes both the age of life on Earth and our own place within it:

“Before dinosaurs even appeared, trilobites were fossils under their feet.” (p. 110)

I have received a copy of this book from the publisher through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. My thanks.

Thank you Netgalley and Columbia University Press for access to this arc.

All living things, from their bodies to their behavior, have evolved. “Locked in Time” seeks to show fossil evidence of this. Author Dean Lomax (who sold his Star Wars collection to fund his first trip to the US to study in Wyoming) chose 50 fossil examples to examine how dinosaurs, insects, birds, land living whales, turtles, and parasites (among others) developed and showed behaviors that helped them survive the cutthroat competition to get their genes into the next generation. And these aren’t just “here is the animal and what it looked like” or speculations about what these animals were doing at the moment of death and subsequent fossilization. By carefully studying the fossils and comparing them to modern animals and their behavior, Lomax shows that these fossils are early (in some cases half a billion years old) evidence that prove fish sex, that ichthosaurs gave birth to live “icklets” (as Lomax dubs them), or that SUE and other T Rexes suffered from similar jawbone infestations of parasites as modern birds, among other things.

The chapters are divided into broad categories such as reproduction; parental care and den building; migration and travel; hunting, eating and fighting; and a catch-all of weird stuff. Some fossils displaying these behaviors are 500+ millions of years old while others are as recent as just a few million years. Most of these examples are illustrated by (usually) multiple photos of the actual fossils as well as lovely artistic drawings. From fighting to mating, birthing to sleeping, and farting to peeing these amazing fossil finds prove that stuff we and other living beings do everyday began eons ago. Rather than being dry and academic, the writing style is immediate and accessible. This is truly amazing and fascinating stuff. B+

Let me start by saying this: this book will make you feel things about extinct animals that are normally reserved for your own pets. The 50 vignettes are not only incredible case studies, but they’re written about in a way that I’ve never seen done before— Lomax and Nicholls truly bring all of these animals to life by combining the hard fossil facts with present day animal analogs.

Every story is a little gem in itself, it gives you exactly what you need to know, with no room for the confusion or boredom that easily happens in an over-complicated non-fiction read. This book made me care deeply for a pregnant plesiosaur, ancient turtles caught Doing The Deed, dinosaur babysitters, and so much more. It is truly magical how a bunch of bones stuck in rocks came to life in these pages.

It’s amazing to have a book that can so easily reignite the wonder of dinosaurs and prehistoric life in a sea of nonfiction that makes it seem less fascinating and (at one time) alive than it is. Locked in Time genuinely filled me with so much joy and wonder about not just past animal life, but present-day animal life.

Locked in Time is an engaging layman accessible monograph on function and the behavior of prehistoric animals based on the fossil records written by Dr. Dean R. Lomax. Released 18th May 2021 by Columbia University Press, it's 296 pages and is available in hardcover and ebook formats.

This is a really beautifully illustrated and fascinating look at prehistoric animals' behaviors and lives from information gleaned from the fossil records they left behind. The book is layman accessible, and I found it a fascinating read. The chapter bibliographies are well annotated and make for fascinating further reading, but it doesn't get bogged down in overly academic language. This is popular science writing - not a textbook.

The photographs of fossils throughout are fascinating especially with the expert interpretation and extra notes from the author. The thing that elevated the whole book for me were the beautifully and realistically rendered illustrations.

This would make a superlative selection for library acquisition or for fans of science writing, especially those interested in paleontology.

Five stars.

Disclosure: I received an ARC at no cost from the author/publisher for review purposes.

This is my favorite time travel book. Really. Dr. Dean Lomax brings prehistoric animals to life by exploring their death as it is captured in the fossil record. The book is written in a way that made me feel like I was hearing a friend talk about these animals. It is conversational and funny, making fossilized animals interesting and approachable. Also, the illustrations are incredible.

From the death march of a horseshoe crab to fossil farts and dinosaur pee, to hell pigs and ground sloths and everything in between, this book has a little something for everyone. Do yourself a favor and pick up a copy.

I loved this book. Dean Lomax writes with a conversational tone, with the occasional clever side comment. The writing just carried me along and the book was difficult to put down. Since the book is made up of short articles on various fossils, I fell into the trap of “I’ll just read one more”. It was never just one more. Also making the book great were the photographs of the fossil finds. But making this book outstanding were the amazing illustrations by Bob Nicholls. This is a book well worth reading and is an example of fabulous science writing and art. Thank you to Netgalley and Columbia University Press for the advance reader copy.

This book is an entertaining read for anyone who's interested in fossils, evolution, or prehistoric life. It shows what fossils can tell us about the timeline for when different adaptations first appeared. The fossils are brought to life in dozens of illustrations. The book is visually beautiful and easy to read in spite of the technical subject matter.

It's interesting to see how some fossils were originally misinterpreted. For instance, when tiny ichthyosaurs were found inside the bellies of adults, it was first thought that ichthyosaurs were cannibalistic. Later research determined that the fossils were pregnant females, indicating that the species gave birth to live young. I always enjoy seeing how new generations of scientists bring innovative perspectives to old data.

Thanks, NetGalley, for the ARC I received. This is my honest and voluntary review.

Did you know that the biggest burrows ever were built by the extinct giant sloths? Or that some dinosaurs were engaged in a sort of mating dance? And that there are fossils of butterflies, molting arachnids and even creatures during sex? These are only some of the fascinating facts from “Locked in Time”, but there is so much more than that in this great book. It isn’t a random collection of dinosaur trivia, but a very well written story, a real page-turner, with interesting insights about evolution, biology and geology.

I’ve read this paleontology book immediately after “Written in Bone” by Sue Black, about forensic anthropology, and it is funny how similar these two stories are. Both professions not only deal with bones but also use them and various traces as clues to reconstruct the behavior and fates of their subjects, often with astonishing results.

Highly recommended for fans of such books as „Your Inner Fish” or „The Rise and Fall of The Dinosaurs”.

Thanks to the publisher, Columbia University Press, and NetGalley for the advance copy of this book.

A fascinating look into daily life in a lost world. Dinosaurs are legendary creatures, but we know little about them. Lomax, a Paleontologist, changes that, explaining how he thinks they lived. Not only their legendary battles but also their mating rituals, childbearing, eating habits and even their waste disposal. What we can learn about prehistoric creatures (there are also mammals, fish and even insects) necessarily requires speculation, but Lomax builds scientific theories based on the last traces of these animals: fossils. From fights, to pregnant females, remains of smaller animals in the alimentary tract of larger creatures, to farts preserved by amber, the author gives readers an encompassing insight into the early life of our planet. The comparisons he draws with animals alive today, make for interesting reading. And the illustrations by Bob Nicholls make everything easier to grasp. In a world full of books about dinosaurs, this one is truly original and very interesting.
I chose to read this book and all opinions in this review are my own and completely unbiased. Thank you, NetGalley/Columbia University Press!

An excellent laypersons book about ancient life and how fossils can be used to deduce how long gone animals such as the dinosaurs lived and functioned when alive. Well written and engaging read. The only thing that keeps this book from being a top tier, five star read is that the sample copy I received was full of errors like missing letters in words and missing numbers where numbers were suppose to be included. Usually I could figure out what a word was suppose to be, but the missing numbers were simply unknowns in the text. I am making a massive assumption that these errors will be corrected in the final released copy. It is a shame the editing was not done before this book was released for preview.

I loved this book. The writing style is very accessible and the illustrations are gorgeous. I'd love to frame some of them. I liked how each chapter was about a different behavior and the author was able to show fossil evidence for that behavior from various types of animals from dinosaurs to fish, insects to mammals. The fossils mentioned in the book are from a wide variety of time periods as well so that made it even more interesting to see behaviors developing and continuing through time. Seeing the same type of behavior from a variety of animals was fascinating and made each chapter dynamic and very readable. I would highly recommend this to anyone with an interest in paleontology whether you are well-versed in the field or are an interested lay-person.