Review by Choice Review
This revision to older editions (CH, Jul'09, 46-6212) is divided into 16 chapters grouped in four parts: "Remembrance of Things Past"; "Saurischia: Meat, Might and Magnitude"; "Ornithischia: Armored, Horned, and Duck-Billed Dinosaur"; and "Endothermy, Endemism, and Extinction." The introductory section moves quickly through basic geological background to reach chapter 3 ("Who's Related to Whom--and How Do We Know?"), a primer on phylogenetic systematics (cladistics), which becomes an important unifying theme throughout the text. The authors are clearly concerned that students gain an appreciation for and understanding of phylogeny at a professional level. To that extent, there are cladograms peppered throughout the text. The book is professionally illustrated and the illustrations are superb. Although some of the writing style is clearly targeted to be hip to a student audience, for the most part the content is dense and extremely informative. To that extent, the text will be useful to the non-dinosaurian professional paleontologist. The summary chapters on the classic questions of endothermy and mass extinction are both excellent. Summing Up: Recommended. Lower-division undegraduates and above; faculty and professionals. --Paul K. Strother, Boston College
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Choice Review
