Customer Reviews

Dinosaurs: A Concise Natural History

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(0)
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1 star:		(1)

 

 

I really enjoyed using this book in a college class I took last semester. The pictures and diagrams were very helpful and the text was written in a way which made it easy to read and remember. I intend to keep this book as a reference.

Books on dinosaurs tend to fall into one of two categories: "catalogs" full of color pictures and a little text, marketed to the general public, and college textbooks that presume a background in geology, zoology, and evolutionary biology. Fastovsky & Weishampel have written a concise, accessible, and extremely well-illustrated text that uses the study of dinosaurs to explain evolutionary biology. The tone is scholarly and yet light, even irreverent at times (e.g. Matt Groening's Tree of Life cartoon). Although intended as an intro college text, it's equally useful for high school students and interested amateurs.

The following quote, on the back cover, from Kevin Padian (UC Berkeley Museum of Paleontology) sums up the book perfectly:
"...the most comprehensive and useful text on dinosaurs on the market. It's both authoritative and whimsical, providing students with a great background on dinosaurs and on the sciences needed to understand them. It's fun to read and great illustrations, too."

I've been searching for a nice dinosaur book for a long time, and Dinosaurs is exactly what I was looking for. A book at an academic level, written by renowned scientists in the field, though not too sophisticated, and avoiding too much detailed information about one specific theme. It's a book with a mission, namely teaching undergrads about dinosaurs from a biological perspective, i.e., from a phylogentic point of view. I'm a PhD in biology, but in a very different field. Because the authors wrote the book for people with some scientific background, but kept the writing lightly, it reads away nicely. A book full of nice pictures made by a talented and famous artist, but centered around the contents of the book, instead of the reverse - a situation encountered in most mainstream books dealing with this subject. It gives a nice perspective and overview on evolution, while still discussing different species, yet without loosing itself in too much detail.

xits old and was not in "acceptable' condition when it said the book was in 'acceptable' condition before i bought it!