The Evolution and Extinction of the Dinosaurs

by David E. Fastovsky , David B. Weishampel , Illustrated by John Sibbick

• ISBN13: 9780521811729
• ISBN10: 0521811724
• Edition: 2nd
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2005-02-07
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

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. The book can easily be used as a teaching textbook for a class, but it is also written as a series of readable, entertaining essays covering important and timely topics appealing to non-specialists and all dinosaur enthusiasts: birds as 'living dinosaurs', the new feathered dinosaurs from China, 'warm-bloodedness'. Along the way, the reader learns about dinosaur functional morphology, physiology, and systematics using cladistic methodology - in short, how professional paleontologists and dinosaur experts go about their work, and why they find it so rewarding. The book is spectacularly illustrated by John Sibbick, a world-famous illustrator of dinosaurs, commissioned exclusively for this book.

Table of Contents

1. Introduction

2. The Mesozoic Era

3. Discovering Order

4. Interrelationships

5. Origin of Dinosauria

Saurischia

6. Sauropoda

7. Theropoda

8. The Origin of birds

9. Mesozoic Birds

Ornithischia

10. Stegosauria

11. Ankylosauria

12. Pachycephalosauria

13. Ceratopsia

14. Ornithopoda

15. Endothermy

16. Dinosaur Paleoecology

17. Reconstructing Extinctions

18. The Cretaceous/Tertiary extinction.