Beast Companions: The Unsung Animals of the Dinosaurs' World

Despite their fame and reputation, dinosaurs represent only half the story of the Mesozoic Era. In Beast Companions: The Unsung Animals of the Dinosaurs' World, paleontologist John Foster explores the often-overlooked animals that coexisted with them. These ancient species, often equally remarkable as their dinosaur neighbors, can provide valuable insights into the biotic history of our planet. In some cases, these animals reveal just as much, if not more, about the extinct ecosystems of the time as the dinosaurs themselves.

By drawing on a wealth of current and past discoveries, Foster embarks on a sweeping journey across 164 million years to visit the beast companions of the dinosaurs. Along the way, he examines fish, insects, the first frogs and salamanders, turtles, snakes and lizards, marine reptiles, crocodiles, pterosaurs, birds, mammals, and other animals of the Mesozoic Era.

Beast Companions is a groundbreaking exploration of the story of these contemporaries of the dinosaurs that set the modern world in motion more than 200 million years ago

John Foster is a paleontologist at the Utah Field House of Natural History State Park Museum in Vernal, Utah. He has worked in the Mesozoic rocks of more than two dozen stratigraphic formations throughout the western United States for more than 30 years, specializing in the paleoecology of Late Jurassic vertebrates, including dinosaurs and other animals. Although he likes that many of the paleontological sites in the Rocky Mountain and Southwest regions are in gorgeous and wild settings, he would not mind if they were closer to the beach and good waves. He is also author of Jurassic West: The Dinosaurs of the Morrison Formation and Their World and Cambrian Ocean World: Ancient Sea Life of North America.