Archelon and the Sea Dragon

There are a few videos with Archelon in them. One of them is not so much a video as a narrated book, which is pretty fantastic as you get an entire story, rare for books still within copyright (which this book should still be though it is out of print at this time), and it gets read to you; admit it, even as an adult we like to hear a story told or read to us every now and then. The video for that is posted below.

The story is pretty accurate as far as what we think was the ecological niche and behaviors of Archelon. The illustrations of Archelon are also fairly well done. Given the date of publication, and thus illustration, the illustrations of the other animals in the book are fairly well done. Since the book was originally written and published, though, the images of plesiosaurs, pterosaurs, and mosasaurs have been updated and made the illustrations within the book look quite out of date. Tylosaurus in particular is rather out dated, but that is quite fine considering that the science, at the time, was actually quite accurate. I do not want to comment on the end of the story, because that kind of ruins it, but it gets a little silly for a while there, as we know more about marine creatures these days than the author did in the 1970's. I do like that the story includes a small snippet of the modern turtle egg laying journey (I assume that revealing this part of the end of the story does not ruin the book for anyone!).

As stated, other videos exist, but I want to save some of those for Thursday, if I can find good clips and not just stills. For today, enjoy a good, but older, book.