Meet the Megafauna!, a recent children’s book by Gabrielle Balkan, is described as getting to know 20 of the largest animals to ever roam the Earth. Yes, size does matter. But we’re not talking mega dinosaurs here. Her choices are of comparatively lesser-known champions, most of which postdate the extinction of those ruling reptiles. Even so, some disappeared thousands or even millions of years ago.
Defined simply as animals of supersized proportions, Balkan has focused on a fascinating group that have modern relatives to which we can relate. For example, there’s the Supercroc, a crocodilian that was twice the size and eight times as heavy as the largest crocodiles alive today. Then there’s the Giant Ape that disappeared from Earth 100,000 years ago. The top of its head towered to the height of a basketball goal! And keep an eye out for the Giant Shark, which at 60 feet long would make Jaws look like a panfish. Don’t worry about it, though, you can still go in the water. The last one was “seen” 3.6 million years ago.
Not all are extinct, however. Three of the featured creatures still roam the earth, including the largest and heaviest animal of all, the Blue Whale (weighing in at 400,000 pounds and a length of more than 100 feet!). To help the reader appreciate the immensity of this magnificent cetacean, a nice feature of the book is the presence of gatefolds. The Blue Whale has one which unfolds to just shy of 3 feet.
The book is nicely illustrated by Phung Nguyen Quang and Huynh Kim Lien. Kudos to them. Painting animals based upon fossilized bones — in some cases just fragments of them — must have been no small challenge.
But there’s much more to the book than pictures and statistics of animal size and weight. Balkan has created a narrative for each species that brings to life how they might have lived and interacted with other animals of the time, including what they ate, what ate them, how they raised their young, and perhaps most pertinent of all, why they are no longer here.
So where did they go? She lists four possible explanations, including earth’s temperature change, shifting land masses, longer reproduction periods and the actions of early humans. Regarding impacts by today’s humans, she offers ways we can protect modern megafauna that need our help. For their sake, let’s hope they are heeded.
