Dinosaurs, Spitfires, and Sea Dragons [Paperback]

Christopher McGowan (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 067420770X | ISBN-13: 978-0674207707 | Publication Date: January 1, 1992

Christopher McGowan sets out to solve some of the enduring mysteries about dinosaurs and other prehistoric reptiles. He makes fascinating comparisons between living and extinct animals while presenting topics that range from gigantism to intellect. In addition to exploring the natural history of the Mesozoic Era, McGowan draws on science and engineering concepts to explain curiosities such as the similarities between the aerodynamics of pteranodons and Spitfire planes.

Editorial Reviews

Review

You don't have to be an eight-year-old to fall in love with Dinosaurs, Spitfires, and Sea Dragons...Fun, scholarly, imaginatively written and wondrously anecdotal, this is the perfect companion for eight-year-olds of all ages. (San Francisco Chronicle )

At last, a grown-up's book about dinosaurs. This beautifully illustrated work, written by a literate scientist for an educated lay audience, shines a bright new light into the darkness of the 150-million-year reign of the dinosaurs...An altogether captivating book.
--John Wilkes (Los Angeles Times )

[A] wonderful book...Ultimately the great virtue of this book is that it faces down our instinctive desire to leap from bone to biology and in so doing produces a particular kind of wisdom which transcends its subject matter. For implicit in how McGowan and his kind have approached the dinosaur is a point of view humans almost never assume about themselves. How much are we pure physics? Our walks, our musculature, our electric nerve impulses?...Delicious...In addition to its intellectual strengths, for a book that is often technical, Dinosaurs, Spitfires and Sea Dragons is extremely well-written...The lovely word 'classic' is already engraved upon it. But be advised: This is a science classic. It requires close reading. It demands not just that we approach, but that we be prepared to learn. But is not that the lesson hiding in our fascination with the dinosaurs in the first place?
--Stephen Strauss (Toronto Globe and Mail )

The net effect of [this] book is to make one extremely jealous of anyone lucky enough to take Professor McGowan's class in evolutionary biology at the University of Toronto...The problem with the several dinosaur controversies is that merely to argue about them requires an appreciation of many aspects of Newtonian physics, aero- and thermodynamics and both applied and theoretical geophysics. Since one wishes to be read by more than the world's half-dozen genuine polymaths, one must explain everything along the way, and that is the stunning success of this book. It is a text that can be read with profit by a teen-ager willing to learn a few new words and by a professional in the field of paleontology.
--M. R. Montgomery (Boston Globe )

Dinosaurs are so popular that we often neglect the even more fascinating reptiles of their time that evolved in the most unreptilian habitats of sea (ichthyosaurs, plesiosaurs, and their allies) and air (pterosaurs). McGowan, world's leading expert on ichthyosaurs, and a fine writer as well, tells their wonderful story better than ever before--and doesn't neglect the more conventional dinosaurs either.
--Stephen Jay Gould

Review

Dinosaurs are so popular that we often neglect the even more fascinating reptiles of their time that evolved in the most unreptilian habitats of sea (ichthyosaurs, plesiosaurs, and their allies) and air (pterosaurs). McGowan, world's leading expert on ichthyosaurs, and a fine writer as well, tells their wonderful story better than ever before--and doesn't neglect the more conventional dinosaurs either. (Stephen Jay Gould ) --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 384 pages
• Publisher: Harvard University Press (January 1, 1992)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 067420770X
• ISBN-13: 978-0674207707
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.9 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,388,129 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #65 in Books > Professional & Technical > Professional Science > Biological Sciences > Paleontology > Vertebrate

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars For the person more than casually interested in dinosaurs!, November 12, 1998

By 

[e-mail] (Champaign, IL) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Dinosaurs, Spitfires, and Sea Dragons (Paperback)

This book is ideal for paleontology students or avid dinosaurphiles. Math is used extensively to demonstrate how dinosaurs and other prehistoric creatures walked, ran, swam, flew, etc. The book gives a wonderful glimpse into how the hard science of paleontology is performed, instead of glossing over the math like many other popular books do. Once you finish this book, you will never look at dinosaurs the same way again.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Explains the logic of the evidence, October 27, 2000

By 

Ken Braithwaite (inkster, MI USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Dinosaurs, Spitfires, and Sea Dragons (Paperback)

This book is a bit different. It examines the extent of what we know, or do not know, and on the basis of what evidence. The discussion of what we can tell from teeth, or marks on the bones, etc is the meat of the book. What we can tell with high confidence and what we cannot! Very interesting indeed, and he is not afraid to say "look, this is slender eveidence for such and such a theory."

I really liked this approach.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Dinosaurs, Spitfires, and Sea Dragons, March 12, 2000

By 

Atheen M. Wilson "Atheen" (Mpls, MN United States) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Dinosaurs, Spitfires, and Sea Dragons (Paperback)

I thoroughly enjoyed this volume even though I am not really a dinosaur enthusiast. A little old (c. 1992), it is still a very readable and comprehensive text on the paleontology of dinosarus. The author covers recent findings regarding dinosaur skeletal structure and what it tells of lifestyle, their modes of locomotion and what it implies of thermoregulation, etc. The book would definitely be a valuable first line undergraduate textbook on the subject and on paleontology as a field of research. It also might interest an enthusiastic younger student even to the level of junior high as long as he or she was a reader with a sophisticated vocabulary or one with some knowledge of the discipline already.