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daumari's review
3.0
Ewing follows the intriguing tale of the whorled shark Helicoprion: historical speculation around the first fossils found in Russia and Australia, and then the modern-day revival of scientific interest, sparked by ISU student Jesse Pruitt and Alaskan artist Ray Troll's 20-year obsession. I'm from eastern Idaho, so I remember the exhibit in 2013! Very neat to take a peek behind the scenes of what went into it.
The parts I'm a tad meh on are when Ewing imagined what various people were doing at the time (the farmer who found an Australian fossil, the Russian school inspector who passed a curiosity on to a scientist, etc.) though I recognize that others may disagree on this aspect of popular science books.
Frustratingly, there is a "Resurrecting the Shark" app for augmented reality in the plates available on both the App Store and Google Play shop, but I couldn't find it for my Moto G5 Plus (nor does googling around seem to yield at least a store page...) The Idaho Virtualization Lab does good work, and when I was at the Idaho Museum of Natural History last week, they had augumented reality models of prehistoric horse fossils given flesh that were neat. Hopefully, future editions 1) broaden the availability of devices for this feature and 2) could possibly provide a specific URL to obtain said app.
The parts I'm a tad meh on are when Ewing imagined what various people were doing at the time (the farmer who found an Australian fossil, the Russian school inspector who passed a curiosity on to a scientist, etc.) though I recognize that others may disagree on this aspect of popular science books.
Frustratingly, there is a "Resurrecting the Shark" app for augmented reality in the plates available on both the App Store and Google Play shop, but I couldn't find it for my Moto G5 Plus (nor does googling around seem to yield at least a store page...) The Idaho Virtualization Lab does good work, and when I was at the Idaho Museum of Natural History last week, they had augumented reality models of prehistoric horse fossils given flesh that were neat. Hopefully, future editions 1) broaden the availability of devices for this feature and 2) could possibly provide a specific URL to obtain said app.
wynter's review
3.0
It's so incredibly hard to find quality popular science literature on palaeontology; but paleoichthyology - forget about it. Books on ancient fish are harder to find than a fossilised shark skeleton. That's why I was incredibly excited about finding this gem - not just a book about Paleozoic sharks, but one that specifically focuses on the mysterious helicoprion, whose teeth formed a strange whorl formation, puzzling scientists for over a hundred years. While I applaud the author on taking a noble task of bringing the obscure subject to light, I wish I enjoyed the writing more. It was simply too dense for a non-specialist and drowned a bit in the biographical narrative of all scientists involved. I simply found myself zoning out too much, and it's a shame, because the sharks themselves are fascinating.