Following in the fossilized footsteps of its predecessor product, Prehistoric Animals II presents another select group of ancient animals for the d20 system. As in the previous book, the creatures here are all (templated versions notwithstanding) real-world animals that naturally went extinct millions of years ago. A quick caveat is that none of these creatures are dinosaurs; there’s another Animal Archives product line that covers them.

The book is twenty-one pages long, including a page for the cover, one for the credits, and one for the OGL. Beyond the cover, there’s no color artwork here. Each new creature has an illustration showcasing what they might have looked like. Helpfully, the artist has placed a silhouette of a human by each picture, giving a sense of scale. There’s no introduction nor table of contents, but the product is fully bookmarked.

Five new prehistoric creatures are presented in the book, two of which have fantasy variants presented also, made from existing templates. None of the creatures in here are massively powerful, as only one gets over CR 5 (templated creatured notwithstanding). Each entry is quite robust in the information it offers, however, including sections on how each animal can be used by the PCs, and what the animal was like when it lived in the real world. Following this, there’s a listing of celestial/fiendish stat blocks for the monsters that can be summoned via spells, and a brief listing of what monsters appear on the summon nature’s ally lists. Likewise, the templates used to make the advanced monsters are also reprinted at the end of the book, which is a nice touch.

Prehistoric Animals II is a worthy entry into the series (though you don’t need the previous book to use this one) presenting creatures that are as interesting as they are alien. Anyone running an ancient-setting game would be very well served by the collection of freakish, but entirely natural, animals here.