About the book: 2024 / Ratings and awards The author is a laureate of the RAS prize for the best work on popularizing science in 2021 ( submission of the RAS Commission for the Popularization of Science) in the category “Best popular science book about ecology, environmental protection and biodiversity conservation” for the book “Adventures of Species: Vampire Legs, Spidertails and Other Transitional Forms in the Evolution of Animals.” What is the book “Like the Living: Two-legged Snakes, Zombie Sharks and Other Vanished Animals” about? What color was the ichthyosaur? How many calories per day did Megalodon require? Is it possible to fly on abdominal ribs (and what is it anyway)? What did snakes with legs, turtles without shells, or amphibians with fins look like? Who ate whom, how did they move and what did they breathe? Today, paleontology answers questions that just ten years ago no one would have even dared to ask. Using the example of 27 very different animals, the famous Russian geologist and popularizer of science Andrei Zhuravlev talks about what we can learn from paleontological finds. A variety of creatures appear as living creatures - from small organisms, more like worms, that swam in the seas more than half a billion years ago, to giant lizards, whose steps shook the soil a little over 40,000 years ago, and terrifying megasharks. Associated with megalodon three important questions that concern both ordinary people and scientists alike. What size was he anyway? What did he have for lunch? And the most pressing: is this mega shark extinct? It seems that it is impossible to answer the first two, even approximately. After all, only teeth and a few vertebrae remained from the megalodon. But there are a lot of teeth. Even suspiciously a lot. Features New artistic reconstructions of fossil animals made especially for this book. Photographs of rare museum specimens. Reference Material: None of the 27 characters presented here can be considered minor. All of them are the main ones, like any other type of living organisms that inhabit the planet now or lived on it in the distant and not very distant past. Someone started a long series of ancestors, and his descendants (we are no exception) have the opportunity to stay on Earth today... Someone created healthy competition in all respects and forced those around them to evolve faster and faster... For whom For everyone who loves nature and wants to know how and where the fish, amphibians and other vertebrates that surround us came from, as well as the long line of creatures that preceded man.