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Product Description
This is the first supplement to the highly acclaimed Dinosaurs: The Encyclopedia that was named an ALA OUTSTANDING REFERENCE BOOK. Some of the reviews of the 1997 work: “Highly recommended”—Choice; “grander than anything ever accomplished of similar title or reputation”—Dinosaur World; “the most thorough and most scholarly dinosaur encyclopedia yet”—Rettig on Reference; “THE dinosaur encyclopedia”—VOYA; “a welcome resource”—ARBA; “a monumental archive of information’—BioScience; “solidly scientific....plentiful illustrations and photographs [over 1,400] provide for fascinating browsing”—Reference & User Services Quarterly. The new work, which maintains the arrangement of the primary volume and is up to date late into 1998, includes well over a dozen new dinosaurian genera and even more new species and new life restorations. Section I provides introductory text on subtopics such as “The Mesozoic Era,” “Ectothermy Versus Endothermy” and “Dinosaur Extinctions.” Section II continues the workable ordering of dinosaurian systematics. Section III continues the alphabetical compilation of new dinosaurian genera. Section IV continues the detailing of doubtful genera that have appeared in the paleontological literature.
Amazon.com Review
If you think the title Dinosaurs: the Encyclopedia has a movie-sequel ring, you're only partly mistaken; editor Donald F. Glut has already authored The Dinosaur Dictionary and The Complete Dinosaur Dictionary. But you'll find no T. rex running amok here; this is a dense and rigorously scientific tome meant for only the most dedicated dinosaur lover. Part 1 contains an excellent background history of scientific findings in this rapidly changing field. (Also here is a wonderful, paragraph-long sentence detailing possible causes of the dinosaurs' demise, including "brains too small" and "inability to mate, sexual frustration, suicide.") Once into the alphabetical listings, however, it's easy for the layman to get lost. If the description "articular facets of prezygapophyses much enlarged in anterior caudals" makes your eyes cross, perhaps this is not the reference for you. But if your amateur paleontologist shows signs of getting serious, you won't get much more detailed, thorough, or reliable information than that contained here. And there's always the glossary in back, wherein you'll find words such as "ginglymus" and "astragalus" defined in everyday English.
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