The Evolution and Extinction of the Dinosaurs

This is a comprehensive 2005 book is simply the best textbook on dinosaurs available.

David E. Fastovsky (Author), David B. Weishampel (Author), John Sibbick (Illustrated by)

9780521811729, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 7 February 2005

500 pages, 250 b/w illus.
26 x 21.7 x 3.1 cm, 1.376 kg

'One of the real strong features of The Evolution and Extinction of the Dinosaurs are its line drawings by John Sibbick, one of the foremost dinosaur illustrators who excels here as a textbook illustrator as well. … a great achievement by the authors and a substantial improvement over the first edition. It must have been a real challenge to write an update of this rapidly moving field, but the book very well manages to convey the excitement of the ongoing research on dinosaurs.' Journal of Zoological Systematics and Evolutionary Research

This 2005 edition of The Evolution and Extinction of the Dinosaurs is a unique, comprehensive treatment of this fascinating group of organisms. It is a detailed survey of dinosaur origins, their diversity, and their eventual extinction. The book can easily be used as a teaching textbook for a class, but it is also written as a series of readable, entertaining essays covering important and timely topics appealing to non-specialists and all dinosaur enthusiasts: birds as 'living dinosaurs', the new feathered dinosaurs from China, 'warm-bloodedness'. Along the way, the reader learns about dinosaur functional morphology, physiology, and systematics using cladistic methodology - in short, how professional paleontologists and dinosaur experts go about their work, and why they find it so rewarding. The book is spectacularly illustrated by John Sibbick, a world-famous illustrator of dinosaurs, commissioned exclusively for this book.

Preface to the second edition
Part I. Setting the Stage: 1. Introduction
2. Back to the past: the Mesozoic era
3. Discovering order in the natural world
4. Interrelationships of vertebrates
5. The origin of Dinosauria
Part II. Ornithischia: Armored, Horned, and Duck-Billed Dinosaurs: 6. Stegosauria: hot plates
7. Ankylosauria: mas and gas
8. Pachycephalosauria: ramroads of the Cretaceous
9. Ceratopsia: horns and all the frills
10. Ornithopoda: the tuskers, antelopes, and 'mighty ducks' of the Mesozoic
Part III. Saurischia: Predators and Giants: 11. Sauropodomorpha: the big, the bizarre, and the majestic
12. Theropoda I: nature red in tooth and claw
13. Theropoda II: the origin of birds
14. Theropoda III: the early evolution of birds
Part IV. Endothermy, Environments, and Extinction: 15. Dinosaur thermoregulation: some like it hot
16. Patterns in dinosaur evolution
17. Reconstructing extinctions: the art of science
18. The Cretaceous–Tertiary extinction: the frill is gone
Glossary
Subject index
Generic index
Author index.

Subject Areas: Palaeontology [RBX], Evolution [PSAJ]