Month: August 2010

by Tim Gardom and Angela Milner

This last of the dinosaur books I\’ve been reading is my favorite. It\’s just so fascinating, and so well presented. The text, while of course being very factual, is also written in a reader-friendly fashion and there\’s even bits of humor here and there! The Natural History Museum Book of Dinosaurs tells you all sorts of things you don\’t get from the other books. Like how detailed, long and tedious the work of paleontologists actually is- one chapter takes the reader through the work of presenting a single specimen, from removing it from the dig site, cleaning, figuring out how the skeleton fits together, comparing it to other known species and finally presenting it to the public and the scientific community. There\’s a lot of work involved! I\’m always wondering how scientists learned things like how well a certain dinosaur could smell, or at what age it died, and this book explains a lot about the detective work (so to speak) that gains that knowledge. I also really liked the parts that explained dinosaur physiology by comparing them to present-day animals, and the section on how dinosaurs have been depicted by media and artists, capturing the imagination of so many (but often misrepresenting things like which dinosaurs co-existed). Other really intriguing chapters cover things like how scientists have figured out some aspects of dinosaurs\’ social lives, the history of early dinosaur fossil discoveries, and a layout of evidence on how dinosaurs evolved into birds. All really amazing stuff. The pages are illustrated with photographs of dig sites and museum exhibits, diagrams, drawings, paintings and models (both computer-generated and sculptures). This is a really rich reference source and fascinating reading as well. A great book to wrap up my week of dinosaur reading!

Rating: 4/5 …….. 144 pages, 2006

More opinions at: Dinosaur Books and Facts

Smithsonian Handbooks
by Hazel Richardson

This book is a sort of field guide to dinosaurs. If you\’re interested in prehistoric beasts, it\’s a great reference. The first part of the book has a family tree showing the classification of life forms and how dinosaur (and other ancient animal) groups are related to each other.There is an explanation of what classifies animals as dinosaurs, a geological timeline, details on how fossils are formed and then a description of each major time period with its characteristics and signature life forms. All of these things are presented in a lot more detail than the other books I\’ve read. The bulk of Dinosaurs and Prehistoric Life is made up of animal profiles, highly pictorial, each pointing out key features of the animal and organized by both time frame and habitat. There are 200 dinosaurs, pterosaurs, early mammals and other creatures featured, and at the back is a list of 300 more that were not included in the main body. A lot of these bizarre and fantastical animals were ones I\’d never seen or heard of before. Even my husband was exclaiming with amazement when I periodically interrupted what he was doing to show him one or the other. One thing I kept thinking as I looked at all the varied dinosaur forms, especially those with horns and spiky backs was, is this where the idea of dragons came from? Stick a pair of leathery wings on any of a number of these beasts and it would look like a really cool dragon. I wonder if early scientists put a few skeletons together wrong and thought they\’d found evidence of dragons.

Rating: 4/5 …….. 224 pages, 2003