Product Description

This new edition of The Evolution and Extinction of the Dinosaurs is a unique, comprehensive treatment of this fascinating group of organisms. It is a detailed survey of dinosaur origins, their diversity, and their eventual extinction. The book can easily be used as a teaching textbook for a class, but it is also written as a series of readable, entertaining essays covering important and timely topics appealing to non-specialists and all dinosaur enthusiasts: birds as ‘living dinosaurs’, the new feathered dinosaurs from China, ‘warm-bloodedness’. Along the way, the reader learns about dinosaur functional morphology, physiology, and systematics using cladistic methodology - in short, how professional paleontologists and dinosaur experts go about their work, and why they find it so rewarding. The book is spectacularly illustrated by John Sibbick, a world-famous illustrator of dinosaurs, commissioned exclusively for this book.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #336711 in Books
• Published on: 2005-02-07
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 500 pages

Review
From reviews of the previous edition: ‘The book amply fulfils its objective of providing an authoritative, stimulating and lively introduction to dinosaurs. There are not many textbooks to which the epithets ‘lively‘ and ‘entertaining‘ apply, and that are friendly enough for a general reader … I can also warmly recommend it to interested general readers as the best available and thoroughly accessible account of dinosaurs and how they fit in with current scientific thinking - with the bonus that it presents the facts in an exciting manner, while dispelling the hype.‘ Angela Milner, New Scientist

From reviews of the previous edition: ‘… reflects the rigour of modern palaeontological research, and it will transmit the idea of method and testing to students, especially in terms of cladistic analysis of relationships, studies of macroevolution and of functional morphology. The book also conveys enthusiasm and excitement, two further principles of science that new generations of palaeontologists display in abundance … The presentation of the book is superb. The writing style is lively, and there are many amusing anecdotes and sidelines on popular attitudes to dinosaurs … There are even 14 colour plates, which is astounding in a textbook at this price.‘ Michael J. Benton, Trends in Ecology and Evolution

‘… superb … It‘s engagingly written, authoritative, up-to-date, well illustrated, and bursting with enthusiasm. … The book is written as a university level text, but could easily be used to develop modular material for teaching at any level. I hope it will be. Highly recommended.‘ Biologist

'… it serves as an excellent primer on and about dinosaurs. … For the uninitiated this should prove to be a thoroughly good read …' Geological Magazine

'There is much in The Evolution and Extinction of the Dinosaurs to appeal to the non-specialist and dinosaur enthusiast as well as to the student market. The book covers exactly what it says on the jacket, including important sections on systematics using cladistic methodology that shows how dinosaurs relate to each other and to other animals. It offers more in-depth coverage of dinosaurs than broader vertebrate palaeontology textbooks … very good value.' Times Higher Education Supplement

'… a fascinating and interesting book. Very well illustrated, it is of an easy understanding. Concise and clear …' Geobios

'One of the real strong features of The Evolution and Extinction of the Dinosaurs are its line drawings by John Sibbick, one of the foremost dinosaur illustrators who excels here as a textbook illustrator as well. … a great achievement by the authors and a substantial improvement over the first edition. It must have been a real challenge to write an update of this rapidly moving field, but the book very well manages to convey the excitement of the ongoing research on dinosaurs.' Journal of Zoological Systematics and Evolutionary Research

Customer Reviews

Clades of the past
"Dinosaur!" The word still makes children's faces bright with excitement. "Can we go to the museum, Dad?" - and a golf game is set aside. The authors note how pervasive the dinosaur has become in our society. We live in "dinosaur-crazy times with documentaries, colouring books and films - "we have thrice feasted on Jurassic Park movies". The authors feel this familiarity is all to the good - we learn something of Nature's ways from some of this exposure. They want us to take the next step and learn something of what the professional paleontologist does to bring the wealth of information about dinosaurs to our ken. We also need to understand what conditions prevailed while dinosaurs dominated the planet for 160 million years. That's a real success story and it deserves our attention.

In presenting their story of these impressive animals, the authors start with the general environment. Dating rocks is a fundamental aspect of how dinosaurs developed over time. The explain the science of "chronostratigraphy" using the classical examples of layered rock and moving on to how radioactive isotopes provide dating. They portray what an organism goes through in the process of fossilisation, and how fortunate we are to have anything to assess. Continental drift, which at once complicates and explains what would otherwise appear as anomolies, adds background. Climate is a further tool to explain how the creatures studied lived at the time.

With this background provided, they move on to depict the origin of dinosaurs. It's not a simple picture, as these "terrible lizards" didn't engage in a "takeover" of the planet as a given. It was a long, slow process from small beginnings. The first fossils, named by Darwin's major nemesis, Richard Owen, were an enigma. Years of study and conjecture led to the beginnings of dinosaur classification. The years of "the bone wars" in North America provided much insight into dinosaur development and diversity. As the story unfolds, the authors turn to an organisational method known as "cladistics". Clade diagrams demonstrating relationship between organisms are used to link more recent forms with their ancestral roots. It's an effective method, requiring only visible physical traits to establish the relationships. That, however, remains its greatest limitation and the source of enduring controversy.

Each segment of the book depicts a type - Stegosauria with their massive back plates, Ceratopsia with their massive horns and frilled skulls and Theropoda, "nature red in tooth and claw". The types are described in detail, with an anatomy lesson provided for the type. The evolution of each is traced, with additional material on eating habits, social make-up and how they attacked or defended themselves. Capping each section is an account of how each was first discovered, with biographies of the major figures in paleontology appended. In this second edition, the book updates the information gathered in the past decade. The update shows how the profession of palaeontology has expanded and enriched our knowledge. With lavish illustration by John Sibbick, the presentation is flawless, providing a wealth of new and detailed information.

Palaeontology is not without its disputes, and the authors carefully explain the issues, the scientists holding disparate views and how these are likely to be resolved. Among the enduring issues are whether dinosaurs were warm-blooded and the relationship between them and modern birds. The authors are unequivocal in their stance on these debates, sustaining their case on the available evidence. Their approach gives full voice to the disputants in these controversies, providing complete assessment of the data.

The book is a treasure for anyone interested in these animals that loomed so large in the history of life on our planet. Given the environmental, dietary, body structure and development information provided here, another edition will likely be some time in appearing. If your child mentions the word "dinosaur", have this book handy for answering their questions. And when they ask you to defer your golf match for a trip to the museum to see the reconstructions of these mighty, and not so mighty, animals, donate the time without remorse. You, too, may see them again with a child's eyes. But you will be prepared for what you'll be seeing. [stephen a. haines - Ottawa, Canada]

The Evolution and Extinction of the Dinosaurs
Finding this book was a pleasant surprise as there aren't many current books available out there to the layperson on the subject of general paleontology. The relatively new usage of the science of cladistics in the classification of dinosaurs was extremely interesting and enlightening. There is also a section dealing with the evolution of birds from dinosaurs that is worth the read. My only real knock with this undergraduates textbook is that the illustrations are quite bad, in fact I was very surprised to see illustrations of such poor caliber. Would have given this book a higher rating but for the graphics of this text.

Dry and Overly Devoted to Cladistic Studies
This was the required text for a class I recently attended. Despite earlier reviewers' accolades, I found this work exceedingly dry, with pages upon pages devoted to morphology, philogeny and cladograms, in some cases the bulk of individual chapters. While all of this is obviously important, little is present descriptively in terms of what individual species may have looked like, beyond their bone structure, the environments they inhabited, or the natural history of their lives. Instead, pages upon pages are devoted to chronologies of when individual species were first discovered and where, as well as cladograms diagramming where evolutionarily each species and family exists. The former, when occupying much of the book, is tiresome, and the latter, while helpful, without further descriptive and narrative substance exists only as a sterile evolutionary chronology. And, I agree, the illustrations are rather laughable in terms of skill of rendering.

If this is the best that is available, as some reviewers have asserted, then the state of paleontological writing is very poor indeed. Someone who can actually write, beyond the technical, needs desperately to be found who can infuse some descriptive life into these reading. While the actual subjects may long be dead, there is no reason for the readings to be, as is evidenced in the recent and largely excellent, if at times speculative, Discovery series "Walking with Dinosaurs." And teachers need to be aware that while they may salivate over the technical details of their particular subject or area of interest, the average student will hardly find such dry detail by itself particularly captivating.