The opabinia, an invertebrate from the Cambrian, looks impressive here but was only a few inches long. No reason to tell your players that, however.

I remember devouring the dinosaur books in the local library while waiting for my parents to pick me up after school. When I got into D&D they formed a third of the triumvirate of go-to monsters in my adventures: skeletons, spiders, and dinosaurs.

I think one of the reasons I loved Larry DiTillio’s Chagmat from Dragon 63^• is the unwritten assumption that the bonesnapper came from some underground lost world beneath the mountains (which, in my reskin, became an underground world ruled by intelligent spiders).

So I’ve been on the lookout for a good dinosaur compendium for a while, no longer having access to the books in that long-ago childhood hangout.

I found Prehistoric life^• at the Barnes & Noble for DePaul University while wandering Chicago a few weeks ago. At $12.98 it was a no-brainer to pick it up. It’s huge, and lavishly illustrated. And while I have no idea if the strange illustrations match prehistoric reality, they’re perfect for mysterious and dangerous fantasy monsters.

The book is organized by time period, with a short description of the era’s climate, and a drawing of the shape of the continents. Both plants and animals are covered: within each era, the sections are plants, invertebrates, and vertebrates. Some lovely 10–20 meter tall ferns from the Carboniferous are described, for example.

Some of the names ought to inspire some unrelated fantasy creatures, for example, the “Serpent Rock” formed by the Carboniferous coral Siphonophyllia. That’s just the name of one of the fossils, but I can feel my subconscious already trying to churn out a monster called a serpent rock.

The corythosaurus, a vertebrate from the Cretaceous, were thirty feet long, and may have been notable for their “loud, resonating calls”.

The descriptions themselves are fairly sparse. Size is given, for example, but not mass. There is often a comparative silhouette next to a human to give a visual idea of a vertebrate’s size.

In the iconic Cretaceous, for example, we have the Irritator. The info box gives us only Group (Theropods), Date (Early Cretaceous), Size (8m long), and Location (Brazil), along with a description of when it was discovered and how much of its skeleton has been found.

It’s the photo-quality artwork that ought to get your creative juices flowing, however. The stats shouldn’t be that hard to make up once you decide how dangerous your prehistoric creatures need to be.

If there’s a disappointment in the book, it’s the lack of actively dangerous plant life. While in general this is more of a problem with nature than with the book’s completeness, the book itself is missing some entries. There is no mention that I can find, for example, of the Archaeamphora longicervia, though of course for gaming purposes even that would have to be exaggerated from its 2-inch height. (The lack of this makes it far from definitive, as well.)

That said, if you enjoy browsing about dinosaurs and other early life and you enjoy looking for strange new prehistoric creatures to add to your games, this makes a great idea stimulator. If you see it in your own Barnes & Noble I recommend browsing through it.