The Horned Dinosaurs [Hardcover]

Peter Dodson (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 30, 1996

The horned dinosaurs, a group of rhinoceros-like creatures that lived 100 to 65 million years ago, included one of the greatest and most popular dinosaurs studied today: Triceratops. In telling us about Triceratops and its relatives, the Ceratopsia, Peter Dodson here re- creates the sense of adventure enjoyed by so many scientists who have studied dinosaurs since their discovery in the mid- nineteenth century. "It is perhaps surprising that no general work has ever been published about [the Ceratopsia], but the deficit is now redressed by Dodson's engaging, witty, and erudite new book. It is a labor of love by an admitted Oceratophile' (his term), an anatomist particularly skilled in biometrics.... The prose is graceful and never overly serious, and the footnoted asides are informative and amusing, so that even chapters on topics as dry as the necessary skeletal anatomy and principles of classification will be palatable to the non-specialist".--Kevin Padian, Science"In his new book, Peter Dodson, a long-time student of ceratopsians, presents a delightful and authoritative survey of the horned dinosaurs.... Dodson writes in an informal, often cheerfully and unabashedly personal manner. This narrative structure nicely conveys the sense of excitement associated with the discovery of and research on dinosaurs and makes the more technical matters accessible to the interested lay reader".--Hans Sues, American Paleontologist

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

Dodson (veterinary anatomy and geology, Univ. of Pennsylvania, and coeditor of The Dinosauria, LJ 3/15/91) has written a fascinating and comprehensive scholarly and personal survey of the herbivorous ceratopsian dinosaurs that focuses on Triceratops, Chasmosaurus and Protoceratops. His detailed overview includes species taxonomy, skeletal anatomy, biological variation, evolutionary phylogeny, and geographical distribution as well as lingering questions concerning posture, social life, sexual dimorphism and behavior, and final extinction. Dodson's study also covers major sites, fossil discoveries, and professional interpretations of the growing evidence, from the early finds by E.D. Cope, Joseph Leidy, and O.C. Marsh to the present hypotheses by Robert Bakker, Jack Horner, and John Ostrom. Dodson gives special attention to both skull characteristics, e.g., the crest (frill), horns, sutures, and fenestrae and the significant monographs in ceratopsian paleontology. The author has successfully re-created the horned dinosaur in a fascinating book of facts, theories, and speculation. With extensive notes and excellent illustrations, this impressive volume is highly recommended for all academic and large public science collections.?H. James Birx, Canisius Coll., Buffalo, N.Y.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Kirkus Reviews

Every six-year-old can identify Triceratops; here's a book that shows just how much more there is to know about the extinct three-horned monster and its relatives. Dodson (Veterinary Anatomy and Geology/Univ. of Pennsylvania) begins with a broad overview of the horned dinosaurs. The suborder Ceratopsia includes four families, comprising 22 genera and numerous species, all dating from the Cretaceous Era. Large herbivores, they were clearly highly successful animals, as their fossils are among the most common of their time. (One early collector claimed to have seen at least 500 specimens; in comparison, nearly half of all dinosaur species are known from a single specimen.) In the second chapter, Dodson offers a detailed description of the bones of Chasmosaurus, a member of the same family as Triceratops. Having established the essential terminology, he proceeds to examine the various genera and species of ceratopsians based on their anatomy (with the aid of detailed illustrations by Robert F. Walters). Scientists of the last century often decided that any variant from the ``type specimen'' deserved the status of a new species; today most scientists ascribe such differences to natural variations, stages of growth, or sexual dimorphism. Thus, instead of the 13 species of Triceratops described in the literature, Dodson believes there was a single dominant species, T. horridus. While much of his material is highly technical, he brings considerable wit and charm to his argument and gives an excellent sense of the practice of paleontology, as well as of the personalities involved in it. Two final chapters discuss the classification of the various ceratopsian genera in light of the modern disciplines of cladistics and RFTRA (a sophisticated measuring technique), and such questions as their probable diet, mobility, and the cause of their extinction. Dodson has given the next generation of paleontologists a fine starting point from which to begin their own investigations. (6 color illustrations, 75 line drawings, not seen) -- Copyright ©1996, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 392 pages
• Publisher: Princeton University Press (August 30, 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0691028826
• ISBN-13: 978-0691028828
• Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 6.2 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.7 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #415,823 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #11 in Books > Professional & Technical > Professional Science > Biological Sciences > Paleontology > Vertebrate
  • #60 in Books > Professional & Technical > Professional Science > Biological Sciences > Animals > Fossils

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Wonderful things with horns!, May 10, 2001

By 

Caitlin R. Kiernan (Birmingham, AL United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Horned Dinosaurs (Paperback)

Dodson's prose is a delight. One rarely finds a scientist who is also a good writer, capable of conveying the complex ideas of geology and biology (as well as history) in a manner that is both informative and exquisitely entertaining. No dry text here. THE HORNED DINOSAURS provides an up-to-date survey of the known ceratopsians, from familiar taxa like Triceratops and Chasmosaurus, to newer, less well-known forms such as Udanoceratops and Einiosaurus. Wayne D. Barlowe provides a series of beautiful color plates. It's a shame similar volumes are not available for other groups of dinosaurs, such as hadrosaurs and ankylosaurs, books useful to both laymen and paleontologists.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The most comprehensive book on the horned dinosaurs so far., May 5, 1997

By A Customer

This review is from: The Horned Dinosaurs (Hardcover)

This wonderfully illustrated and detailed book has to be in every dinosaur expert's and every dinosaur enthusiast's library. It is not just an encyclopedic summary of every ceratopsian dinosaur genus and species discovered and described so far, but also a discussion on every aspect of their natural history. Dr. Peter Dodson, who is an expert on horned dinosaurs, writes on the discovery, biology and analysis of Triceratops and its kin, the Mesozoic strange beasts

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Horned Dinosaurs, November 26, 2002

By 

Joe Zika "Khemprof" (Cincinnati, Ohio) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: The Horned Dinosaurs (Hardcover)

The Horned Dinosaurs written by Peter Dodsonis a book that concerns itself strictly to a group of dinosauria known as the Ceratopsia of which Triceatops is but one of many.

The book is comprehensive in nature and has many illustrations scattered throughout to help the reader, as the author pieces together the fossil evidence. As a child many of us dreamed of dinosaurs and even had toys fashioned after dinosaurs, but the author has actually found and is studing the dinosaurs for real.

Triceratops was one of my favorites as a child. It could take on a T.rex and win with its three long horns, one on the nose and two horns on the brow and a crown of bone like a halo around the head. Well, after reading this book, there are many different horn combinations and number of horns in the group of dinosaurs names Ceratopsia. Five horns, long and short horns, different crown arrangements, all were dangerous. Following the book you'll find out that the environment was dangerous and the Ceratopsia evolved with the level of dangers so did the bone structure.

Puzzles present themselves as fossil remains of a once very proud group of dinosaurs. The author explains some of them as posture, gait and compares them with the fossil record, footprints, but I'm not convinced that the author is correct. This book takes us all over the world where dinosaur digs are found, Mongolia, Alberta, Canada. The adventure in this book is trying to figure out after the discovery what these animals were like.

Clues range from not only the impressive armor in the skulls, but the actual deconstruction of the skeletal remains to nests/eggs and diet and tooth structure. All in all, this book is presented for general readers and specialists, but with the easy going narrative its not hard to be engrossed in this book.