Review

The editors of this volume sought to produce "the single most authoritative account of dinosaur paleontology accessible to the general reader." To achieve this, they have tasked a broad spectrum of authors to produce chapters each giving an overview of a discrete topic, with the good use of illustrations and a minimum of jargon or assumed knowledge. The style is inevitably uneven, but the aim of communication to the nonspecialist has been generally successful. At the same time, I found that chapters on subjects where I had a good knowledge of the literature regularly included previously unpublished work, and/or new thoughts on familiar work. Humor is also used exceptionally effectively: there is a very apt Calvin & Hobbes cartoon, and we find out how many lawyers the T. rex of the film Jurassic Park would have to consume to meet its energy needs for a year.

The 34 chapters are organized into six very different sections. The first deals with the history of dinosaur discovery, and is very effective in conveying both the challenges and joys of scientific discovery. The second describes how traces of dinosaurs are recovered and studied. The breadth of scope here is considerable, from practical details of how to record dinosaur footprints to an explanation of the ways in which molecular techniques can be applied to the study of dinosaurs.

Part 3 deals with the classification of dinosaurs and gives an ordered description of each of the dinosaur groups. The phylogeny is interesting enough in itself, but there is more to the section than this: the development of dinosaur systematics serves as a very illuminating parable of the very human and often far from dispassionate way in which science progresses, and there is plenty of insight into the evolution and physiology of the exceptionally diverse range of creatures which fall into the category of dinosaur.

Section 4 is on what we can infer about how dinosaurs lived from the traces which they have left. Here the level of conceptual difficulty increases somewhat, and lay readers may struggle in some places, despite strong efforts by authors and editors to keep their explanations as clear as possible. As well as covering the history of a given approach, the authors often present very recent (there are references to papers published in 1997) and previously unpublished pieces of work, whilst also focusing on potential future directions for research. Much of this section concentrates on the likely metabolic rates of dinosaurs and the many implications of this for physiology, behavior, and population-level considerations. Ten to fifteen years ago, such discussion would have been much more polarized and heated; in contrast, here authors generally stick to their own angle of inquiry and make little reference to opposing or contradictory viewpoints put forward by other contributors. Where authors do cross chapter boundaries and discuss the ideas of others, this discussion is generally very polite. Maybe science, or just this reviewer's blood lust, could have been better served by a remit which encouraged contributors to feel free to dissent from views expressed elsewhere in the book.

Section 5 attempts to place the dinosaurs in context by considering the Mesozoic Era more generally, encompassing biogeography, non-dinosaurian vertebrates, and the extinction of the dinosaurs. This last chapter is particularly effective, being cowritten by a believer in sudden catastrophe and one who believes that dinosaurs faded away gradually over an extended period. Typical of the book as a whole, the authors find much common ground but raise plenty of issues worthy of further thought and research.

The final section includes a single chapter on the dinosaurs in the media; this provides light entertainment at the end of the book, and includes a useful guide to the best dinosaur Web sites.

This book succeeds magnificently in having something to offer anyone with an interest in dinosaurs, and it shows that dinosaurs continue to present many challenges worthy of research. Furthermore, as the list of contributors to this book demonstrates, scientists from a great diversity of backgrounds can make an important contribution to this effort. Read this book, and you'll want to join them.