31 of 35 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Dinosaurus: The Complete Guide to Dinosaurs, September 14, 2004
This review is from: Dinosaurus: The Complete Guide to Dinosaurs (Hardcover)
"Dinosaurus: The Complete Guide to Dinosaurs" written by Steve Parker is a wonderful text about how the comtemporary view is of the 500 dinosaurs within the pages of this book. "Dinosaurus" is comprehensive to say the least, contemporary, innovative, and is unique in the portrayal of how these dinosaurs lived their lives from flesh-eaters, to egg-stealers, and to the plant eaters. this book covers and extensive array of they animals that we've become to know more about due to new digs and research.
"Dinosaurus" incorporates the latest thinking as to how the listed dinosaurs lived out their lives and eventually died. This book is a challange to the latest thinking on habit and habitat, making for very intertesting reading. When dealing with dinosaurs, perhaps the only certainty to the fact is change. More and more people are lending their collective knowledge to the study of paleontology and we are getting a truer picture of what these animals presumablely looked like from the skeletal remains. With the advent of forensics being applied to paleontology more information is being gleamed for the digs when remains are now found.
The number of kinds, or species, of animals, plants and other living things in existance today exceeds 10 million. While insects are the vast majority. There are some main subgroups of invertebrates which include nearly 100,000 species. With this in mind remember that 99 out of 100 kinds of living things that have ever existed are no longer around. They form a vast array of life that have appeared and then disappeared on the planet.
There is a unique fold out for the different eras and the subgroups of time within them... giving the reader a chronological breakdown of when life started and flourish and different times during the past to the present, and there are examples of the life that existed in these time periods. The classification of some 400 genra of dinosaurs, and of several species within many of these genra, is a terrific achievement in relation to a group of animals only known to us via a fossil record.
I found this book to be enthralling and kept my interest till the end with all the latest information incorporated in the drawing of the dinosaurs and what we precieve them to look like. The principal evidence for the existence of dinosaurs and other long-gone living things comes from fossils, as these are the remains of organisms, or the traces they left.
"Dinosaurus" has dinosaurs from North America(Wyoming, Montana, and Alberta), Eurasia, Australia, South America, and Africa. What has made dinosaurs ever more interesting in recent years are the many studies that have centered on the companion of these creatures and their respective enviorments, which they lived during the Mesozoic Era.
"Dinosaurus" has fifteen chapters making of a very comprehensive book. Covering Early life, Conquerors of the Land, The First Dinosaurs, The Small Meat-eaters, The Great Predators, Ostrich Dinosaurs, The Giants, The Bird-foot Dinosaurs, The Duckbills, The Boneheads, The Armored Dinosaurs, The Plated Dinosaurs, The Horned Dinosaurs, Other Creatures of the Dinosaur Age, And Afterthe Dinosaurs. There are listings of the Main Fossil Sites and Where to Find Dinosaurs, and very well-appointed glossary, and an Index for easy location of the dinosaur you're looking for.
I would highly recommend this book to the novice and the well season fossil hunter and it give clues as ato what this vast array of creatures looked like. The classification of some 400 genra of dinosaurs, and of several species within many of these genra, is a terrific achievement and should be read by all enthusists. The illustrations really make the book come to life and make the book very interesting.
"Dinosaurus" is a solid 5 star book and should be enjoyed by all with an interest in dinosaurs and their habitat and the is a dino-factoid with every species that gives the actual size to a common human's height and some of the giants are huge, while others are no bigger that the average cat or dog.
You'll get some interesting perspectives reading this book about dinosaurs that you haven't seen elsewhere.
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19 of 21 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Poor Pictures - Megalosaurus Looks Like Darth Maul, May 30, 2008
This review is from: Dinosaurus: The Complete Guide to Dinosaurs (Hardcover)
See all my dinosaur book reviews.
I have been into dinosaurs for 30 of my 35 years, ever since my first trip to the museum gazing upon the fossils of these wonderful creatures. I have an extensive collection of dinosaur books both old and new. "Dinosaurus" is aimed at the new student but is flawed.
The beautifully presented "Dinosaurus" is certainly one of the thickest dinosaur books; almost 450 pages of information contained in 15 chapters. The chapters sort dinosaurs into their broader categories like 'The Giants' and 'Armored Dinosaurs', as opposed to era and period order. The 20 page introduction explains such things as fossilisation, evolution, myths, and time scale. The next two chapters provide information on early life and movement onto land. Chapters 3 to 13 specialise on dinosaurs while the last two go into flying reptiles, sea reptiles and animals of the Tertiary and Quaternary Periods.
Each page features a single dinosaur. Half of the page is a written explanation or description. This mainly presents information on fossil location, discoverer, and some on features of the dinosaur. There is also a fact-file chart. The other half of the page is a picture, either painted or drawn with colour. The book caters for the new student by providing basic information.
I like the way the book is set out. But there are problems:
1) The information is not new or cutting-edge, and where there is individual thought it is only speculation.
The information on each dinosaur is not new. I'm not a palaeontologist, but I have 30 years of interest and knowledge under my belt. I could open an older book of mine and read the same thing for most of the dinosaurs. So, if you are looking for something fresh or new, this is not it.
In dinosaur books, there needs to be a balance between suggested fact and speculation. While some books like "National Geographic Dinosaur" lean too far to suggested fact, "Dinosaurus" speculates too much. For example, I quote: "The long spines of Polacanthus MAY have been along the neck and flanks, with the more curved 'shark's fin' projections along the upper tail. It was a low-slung, heavy dinosaur, PROBABLY with a beak-like mouth for cropping plant food". Polacanthus is an old fossil - it is in books from the 70's. It has been known for years where it's spines are and what it's mouth looks like - the fossil hasn't changed! So there is too much suggestion and not enough fact in "Dinosaurus".
However, this book does showcase recent discoveries (last 20 years), but aside from where they are found and what they look like we are not really told anything else. It really is for the new student.
"Dinosaurus" gives enough information on each dinosaur species for the new student, but it is not comprehensive. My main objection is that it doesn't provide any decent information on genealogies - how the dinosaurs relate to each other. Other dinosaur books, for example "National Geographic Dinosaurs" and "The Kingfisher Illustrated Dinosaur Encyclopaedia", provide much better detail on the families with illustrated family trees matched against time along with evolution patterns. "Dinosaurus" mentions the main group name, for example, Theropoda for Giganotosaurus but not that it is actually an allosaur. All comparisons are with T-Rex not with other allosaurs - its family.
2) Pictures.
The pictures in "Dinosaurus" are the single most disappointing aspect of this book.
Each picture is either very poorly drawn/painted or is terribly inaccurate. For example, I'll just concentrate on the large carnosaurs: Allosaurus is nothing like the modern convention - I'm picturing the allosaurs in 'Walking With Dinosaurs' here: head forward slightly below the neck vertebrae with tail out verses an upright Allosaurus in the book. Also, the book's Carnotaurus doesn't have a bull-like snout but has elbows! Spinosaurus, Albertosaurus and Ceratosaurus are shockingly bad. Megalosaurus looks like Darth Maul.
The other thing is, I am a dinosaur romantic. By this I mean I grew up on dinosaur books that painted pictures of the world they lived in and how they interacted with each other and their surroundings. In other words I prefer the books that have many pictures of sprawling landscapes, pictures of herbivorous dinosaurs in their habitats with the local communities, and pictures of the hunter verses hunted in order to gauge size and scope.
The pictures of each dinosaur in "Dinosaurus" are stand alone - no background, no context, and no sense of size. There is a scale comparing the dinosaur to a 6 foot man, but this is in terms of 'size' not height or length - meaningless information. And information that requires us to turn pages to compare dinosaurs, instead of scaled diagrams of dinosaurs next to each other.
There are hardly any pictures of dinosaurs in an environmental setting and these are taken from other sources anyway. The best ones in this book are also found in "The Kingfisher Illustrated Dinosaur Encyclopaedia". If you want gorgeous pictures, then look no further than Raul Martin - the illustrator of "National Geographic Dinosaurs".
Overall, I'm disappointed with "Dinosaurus". It doesn't add anything to my collection. It would probably suit a new student - but it is a lot of money and there are cheaper, better books. I would recommend "National Geographic Dinosaur" first followed by "The Kingfisher Dinosaur Encyclopedia" by Burnie.
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