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

This new 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.

Klappentext

Written for non-specialists, this detailed survey of dinosaur origins, diversity, and extinction is designed as a series of successive essays covering important and timely topics in dinosaur paleobiology, such as "warm-bloodedness," birds as living dinosaurs, the new, non-flying feathered dinosaurs, dinosaur functional morphology, and cladistic methods in systematics. Its explicitly phylogenetic approach to the group is that taken by dinosaur specialists. The book is not an edited compilation of the works of many individuals, but a unique, cohesive perspective on Dinosauria. Lavishly illustrated with hundreds of new, specially commissioned illustrations by John Sibbick, world-famous illustrator of dinosaurs, the volume includes multi-page drawings as well as sketches and diagrams. First edition Hb (1996): 0-521-44496-9 David E. Fastovsky is Professor of Geosciences at the University of Rhode Island. Fastovsky, the author of numerous scientific publications dealing with Mesozoic vertebrate faunas and their ancient environments, is also scientific co-Editor of Geology. He has undertaken extensive fieldwork studying dinosaurs and their environments in Montana, North Dakota, Arizona, Mexico, and Mongolia. David B. Weishampel is a professor at the Center for Functional Anatomy and Evolution at Johns Hopkins University, School of Medicine. Weishampel is best known for discovering, researching, and naming several rare European dinosaur species. During the 1980s Weishampel gained fame for his work with American paleontologist Jack Horner and later named the famous plant-eating, egg-laying Orodromeus, Horner. Now, a decade after his pioneering studies with Horner, Weishampel is most widely knownfor his current work on the Romanian dinosaur fauna. He is the author and co-author of many titles, including The Dinosaur Papers, 1676-1906 (Norton, 2003); The Dinosauria, (University of California, 1990); and Dinosaurs of the East Coast, (Johns Hopkins University Press,

Zusammenfassung
This is a comprehensive 2005 student textbook on dinosaurs that non-specialists will also find fascinating. It is the only comprehensive text that takes an explicitly phylogenetic approach to dinosaurs. The geological context of dinosaurs is also stressed, and dinosaurs are presented in the context of plate tectonic and climatic settings.

Inhalt

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.