The Princeton Field Guide to Dinosaurs Author: Gregory S. Paul | Language: English | ISBN:
B003YFJ74I | Format: PDF
The Princeton Field Guide to Dinosaurs Description
This lavishly illustrated volume is the first authoritative dinosaur book in the style of a field guide. World-renowned dinosaur illustrator and researcher Gregory Paul provides comprehensive visual and textual coverage of the great Mesozoic animals that gave rise to the living dinosaurs, the birds. Incorporating the new discoveries and research that are radically transforming what we know about dinosaurs, this book is distinguished both by its scientific accuracy and the quality and quantity of its illustrations. It presents thorough descriptions of more than 735 dinosaur species and features more than 600 color and black-and-white images, including unique skeletal drawings, "life" studies, and scenic views--illustrations that depict the full range of dinosaurs, from small, feathered creatures to whale-sized supersauropods.
Heavily illustrated species accounts of the major dinosaur groups are preceded by an extensive introduction that covers dinosaur history and biology, the extinction of nonavian dinosaurs, the origin of birds, and the history of dinosaur paleontology--and that also gives a taste of what it might be like to travel back to the time of the dinosaurs.
The Princeton Field Guide to Dinosaurs is a must-have for anyone who loves dinosaurs, from the amateur enthusiast to the professional paleontologist.
- The first authoritative field guide to dinosaurs
- Covers more than 735 species
- Beautiful, large-format volume
- Lavishly illustrated throughout, with more than 600 color and black-and-white drawings and figures, including:
- More than 130 color life studies, including scenic views
- Close to 450 skeletal, skull, head, and muscle drawings
- 8 color paleo-distribution maps
- Color timeline
- Describes anatomy, physiology, locomotion, reproduction, and growth of dinosaurs, as well as the origin of birds and the extinction of nonavian dinosaurs
- File Size: 32561 KB
- Print Length: 320 pages
- Publisher: Princeton University Press (September 20, 2010)
- Sold by: Amazon Digital Services, Inc.
- Language: English
- ASIN: B003YFJ74I
- Text-to-Speech: Enabled
X-Ray:
- Lending: Not Enabled
- Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #223,103 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)
- #4
in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Nonfiction > Science > Biological Sciences > Animals > Dinosaurs - #32
in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Nonfiction > Sports > Outdoors & Nature > Reference - #38
in Books > Science & Math > Biological Sciences > Animals > Dinosaurs
- #4
in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Nonfiction > Science > Biological Sciences > Animals > Dinosaurs - #32
in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Nonfiction > Sports > Outdoors & Nature > Reference - #38
in Books > Science & Math > Biological Sciences > Animals > Dinosaurs
Paul's "Princeton Field Guide to Dinosaurs" is a wonderful resource with a great deal of information for professionals and lay persons alike, but particularly adults who have an interest in dinosaurs. That being said, it's difficult to know which audience this book is primarily targeting (professionals or lay persons).
To my knowledge, this is the first "field guide" since David Lambert's Dinosaur Field Guide (1986) and Dinosaur Data Book (1989) that extensively covers many known genera and species. However, one advantage to Paul's book over Lambert's is that many of the species accounts are accompanied by illustrations of the known skeletal material upon which the species are identified. Additionall, the skeletal reconstructions for a number of species are shown from different angles (top down & side view primarily). Couple this with Paul's life reconstructions and you have a wonderful resource.
Paul's incorporation of some of the latest research (e.g. Anchiornis huxleyi coloration) makes this book a great and timely asset.
As a lay person who has not kept up on many of the technical papers, I think I would have benefitted from more explanations of some of Paul's taxonomy changes. For example, I was surprised to learn that Styracosaurus was no longer considered a distinct genus, but was lumped with Centrosaurus. The Theropod taxonomic revisions seemed to be well explained, but many of the plant-eaters did not include the same sorts of justification comments.
Another thing that would have perhaps made this book more valuable/interesting to a lay person is to have reduced its size a bit to make it more like a field guide for extant species. Something along the size of a Sibley Guide to Birds would have worked.
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