Customer Reviews

Grave Secrets of Dinosaurs: Soft Tissues and Hard Science

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Dakota, the most perfectly preserved dinosaur mummy, made headlines in 2007. The spectacular fossil promises to yield information on dinosaurs, both biological and environmental, previously undreamed of. "Using state-of-the-art technology to scan and analyse this remarkable discovery, National Geographic and Dr. Manning create an incredibly lifelike portrait of Dakota." So promises the book description.

Unfortunately there is little such information here. To get to what Manning and his team had discovered at the time of writing you have to read 260 pages into the 320 page book. Fossils do not quickly reveal their secrets. The more exquisite the preservation the slower the work must proceed. When you are talking about an intact skin envelope and perhaps other preserved "soft" tissues the work will proceed slowly indeed. Therefore, time after time Manning must break the news to the reader that the results of the research aren't in yet. So precious little about this particular hadrosaur is actually revealed other than his (her?) surprisingly robust posterior. I can't help but think that this book was written at least a year too early. Clearly the publishers wanted to rush the book into publication while the news was still hot. In doing so, however, they have set the reader up for an ultimately frustrating experience.

This is not to say the book is without merit. Certainly not. Manning provides us with a nice, if somewhat superficial, tour of mummies of all sorts, from dinosaurs to mammoths to humans. The circumstances necessary to preserve bodies in such condition are rare indeed and the book is perhaps at its most fascinating in the passages detailing these quite special circumstances. The middle portion of the book, though, where Manning details his early paleontological training in England and the circumstances that brought him into contact with Tyler Lyson (the discoverer of Dakota), are rather dry. There is the unmistakable sound of spinning wheels as the reader presumably moves toward the revelations promised in the jacket copy. Unfortunately, such revelations will have to await a future publication.

Visually, the book is a major disappointment. There are no photographs of the fossil itself (other than one indistinct picture of the CT scan of the tail, a much higher quality image of which can be found online at nationalgeographic.com) and no diagrams, drawings, reconstructions, etc.. to speak of. We have several of the obligatory photos of the excavation of the fossil which are mostly indistinguishable from thousands of other such on-site photos. We get a wonderful, full color restoration of Dakota on the cover (by the talented paleoartist Julius Csotonyi) and that's it.

To sum up, I would recommend this book but with the above caveats in mind. It is reasonably well written, mostly engaging and at times rich in technical details about the techniques modern paleontologists use to tease knowledge from the fossil remains of the spectacular animals that populated our world in the distant past. Just don't expect many such secrets to be revealed in the pages of "Grave Secrets Of Dinosaurs."

(The thing had been in the ground for 65 million years. You'd think they could have waited one more year to publish. I guess that qualifies as irony.)

I assumed the star of this book would be the hadrosaur fossil, Dakota, with its preserved soft tissues and all the paleobiology that goes along with such a magnificent find. Instead it is narrative about how hard it is to excavate, prepare and analyze fossils.

The first two thirds of the book describe the trials and lifestyle of the modern day paleontologist. Then various analytical techniques are mentioned, but not described and ultimately, the take home message is that the analysis is incomplete. Very dissappointing.

As another reviewer said, this book was clearly rushed to print and the fossil is probably several years away from revealing any meaningful additions to our understanding of dinosaurs.

The latter third of the book reads like a review article of known mummified fossils, which is interesting, but then ends up with a rather long description of the techniques used to determine dinosaur gait.

The book was not particularly well written. For example, Manning used a page and a half to explain that because the skin was preserved uncollapsed around the skeleton, the volume of muscle and soft tissue can be calculated. At times, I found myself having to reread sentences and ultimately not understanding the message.

Hopefully Dakota will one day reveal its secrets to the public and subsequent books will include data, pictures, graphs, and new hypotheses on how this animal once existed.

I bought this book with great interest, and quickly discovered there was little "left on the bone," if you will. Plodding through intricate details of what the scientists ate for dinner the night before digging was uninteresting and I felt was blocking me from getting to the results and scientific information I desired to find. Once past the details of the day-to-day experiences, you get to the end of the book, where it is stated the research is just beginning! I understand the urgency of publishing when the story is fresh, but readers would benefit more from getting the whole story.

Much of the background information provided on paleontology and digging strategy was interesting when read in the context of anticipating the results. Sadly, the results were not available.

Wait for the sequel!!!

Wait... It was while still reading the introduction that I began to have doubts about this book - was it to be the Dinosaur as Hero or the young teenager fossil hunter? Had I bought, by mistake, a book written for "the young reader"? Was Dr Manning talking down to me - and given the height of his various University Chairs and multiple degrees how could he not?

I persevered through the opening chapters, but it was a struggle as I could not quite "hear" the author;s "voice" and found that I misunderstood - or totally missed - what he was saying. I decided the book would not be read at one sitting, as so many of my favorites were, and put it up on the `dip into' shelf in the smallest reading room in the house (the one with running water).

I will finish it, and I will then have learned far more about Dinosaurs, Hadrosaurs and paleontology but not - as other reviewers warn - about the conclusions on this particular find.

I recommend, as others have, that you wait for the sequel as it might contain the results of the painstaking research Dr Manning and his team dedicate to `Dakota' and his story.

I felt that this book was written and published a little too soon, possibly so that its information could be put to use for financial reasons before a lot of it was publically up for grabs. I might find this a little questionable if I didn't feel that the underlying reason for this was not self-promotion but a desire to ensure financial support for continued work on the project. Since it sounds like a true treasure with a lot to tell us of the Cretaceous, I feel this is valid.

A lot of the book is what I consider filler. There is, for instance, a thorough though probably unnecessary discussion of mummies of all kinds which takes up a good share of the narrative. While I can understand a need to discuss how this specimen is like and unlike other finds described as "mummies," I don't know if the author really needed to get into a discussion of human mummification. A shorter course would have been to simply discribe what the find was and what it had to tell us and by what means.

I am amazed at the degree to which paleontology has advanced, both in information and in technology, since I myself worked on a degree in geology. A lot has been learned, especially with the cooperative efforts between Chinese and Western researchers on the vast amount of material coming to light in Asia. Just the increase in the data on the evolution of birds has been miraculous, as the book points out in passing. More than anything, the author shows how much information can be gleaned from a rare find if it is carefully excavated and prepared. When modern technology is also applied to the problem, even greater advances can be made. I was particularly impressed with the introduction of ground probing techniques to the elucidation and comprehension of buried landforms contemporaneous with the fossil. I was disappointed, to say the least, that the author had not been able to go into greater detail about what the CT scan had to say about the subject find. The build up for it was tremendous with the illustrations from other finds; not to have actually had the data on this subject was a great let down. As I said, however, I think this was in part due to the need to put something out for public consumption in order to finance the on-going research.

This book like many written by field paleontologists, Gorgon: Paleontology, Obsession, and the Greatest Catastrophe in Earth's History, Lucy's Legacy: The Quest for Human Origins, is heavily autobiographical. That is something I usually don't care for when reading on paleontology and or paleontological finds, since it is information about the discovery I look for in this type of book. Here, however, I felt that the occasional diversion was justified. Written as it is for non-professional readers, the personal information given here provided a clear understanding of what motivates an individual to become a scientist and in particular a paleontologist. Furthermore this book did so without that sense that the book was glory seeking or attempting to characterize the author as a "romantic" Indiana Jones sort. It gives a clear idea of what such an individual must learn to become a paleontologist, what their working conditions are often like, what the trajectory of their career might be expected to be, and so forth. Especially for young people thinking in terms of a future profession, this type of information is useful and important. It certainly made it clear that important fossil discoveries don't just happen and aren't just simple messing about. To do it right is to glean every bit of information we can out of a discovery; to mess about is to destroy forever something that might have been precious.

More than anything I felt that the book was intended to fire up the imagination of the average reader so that investigations of this sort can be supported more fully in the future. Most of us tend to accept this type of discovery as we find it, a fascinating oddity. What it is, though, is a very expensive process. Not only must field researchers actively seek their specimen, they have to resurrect it from the ground, sometimes from solid rock, and without damaging it, or at least damaging it as little as possible. It must then be conserved and ultimately housed for posterity. None of this is without cost. Books of this type help to bring these facts to the public awareness, and I'm grateful for it.

Today's ability to read what nature left behind is truely amazing. I wish the author, Phillip Manning had been able to hold the book publishing off until the full results of the scans were completed. I hope he has a sequel book that will have the results of Dakotas scans and info the scans all provided. This is amazing material. I am so glad I found this book.

New Scientist provided a helpful and positive review on this book ([...]), but sadly you have to pay to see this! So, this aside, here is my take on this exploration of exceptional preservation of dinosaurs from the Hell Creek Formation of North Dakota and dead things from other places.

The book provides a useful review of the science of soft tissues up to its publication date. The question of rights or wrongs in pursuing such work are fairly argued and clearly written. The build-up to the excavation of a hadrosaur dinosaur with exceptional preservation of skin (in the Hell Creek of North Dakota) is built through the book, providing entertaining asides about the scientists directly and indirectly involved with the project. Having watched the National Geographic Channel documentary on this find, the book usefully back-fills much needed information about the team and its different roles.

Reading between the lines, the author seems conscious of the fact that he has much work still to do (some which has been recently published, if you search Google Scholar...you shall find!).....thats if you like long scientific papers :-/

If you want an easy read that gently drags you into the world of paleontology, this is a pretty good contendor.

Paleontologist Phillip Manning has put together a rather detailed book about Dakota, a mummified hadrosaur found by Tyler Lawson, avid fossil hunter, in 1999. There is much for the reader to learn in order to understand the significance of the discovery. And Manning does a good job of providing buckets of background on various dinosaurs, types of fossils, sites, "mummies," types of fossil testing and research, specific finds and what paleontologists learned from them and much more. He is skilled at explaining scientific concepts at a level that the average reader can understand. And his enthusiasm for his work shines through in his writing, peppered with exclamation points and filled with kind words and personal tidbits about his colleagues.

The book follows a sometimes meandering path (going off on short, informational tangents) in getting to the meat of the story; specifics about Dakota, from facts on its discoverer, the initial find, to encasement, transport, scan attempts, and research done to learn more about it. Much of it is absolutely fascinating. The recovery of Dakota, an amazingly intact mummy, provided clues to help determine a whole bunch of things about this type of dinosaur, like its skin's texture, its size, what it may have looked like, how it moved, and the orientation of its skeleton (and enabled the creation of the awesome cover sketch).

Great stuff aside, I was shocked and disappointed to learn (late in the game) that the book was published without the results of the often alluded to - CT scans of the main body, which were delayed due to difficulties in scanning such a gigantic sample. It was a bit like reading a mystery only to find out, when you get to denouement, that the writer had decided to publish without revealing the most important part! The reader doesn't learn this until page 303, "We are still waiting for the final analysis of the CT data..." Fortunately, there is a bit of info on line at the National Geographic site. Even without the main-body scans, Grave Secrets is a great story for the everyman dinosaur fan. Also good: The Best Science and Nature Writing series, The Best American Science Writing series, and Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton.