An animal would not have developed such an extraordinary long neck unless it gave them some sort of evolutionary advantage, but the lack of determining evidence has led to a lot of varied and entertaining speculation as to what that advantage might be. Did Poppy use her ridiculously long neck to lunge out of the water and snatch pterosaurs from the air or to delve down into tunnels to gobble up crabs? The book outlines these and other suggestions in a playful rhyming text, with an information box on each spread providing additional detail. And a prehistoric double act, Alfie Ammonite and Bella Belemnite, crack jokes and provide a comical commentary as Poppy demonstrates each hypotheses.

The book is illustrated by Adam Larkum who has made Poppy, Alfie and Bella into very engaging and appealing characters and populated their undersea world with an abundance of other plants and animals from the 75-million-year-old Cretaceous Period that they inhabited.

I sometimes describe the book as “a prehistoric puzzle”, so some readers may be surprised to discover that no answer is provided at the end. Instead we ask readers a question, “What do you think that immense neck was for?”. Dr Adam and I hope that this book will help young readers to understand the scientific method – proposing and evaluating alternative hypotheses – and encourage them to think critically for themselves.