My Beloved Brontosaurus On the Road with Old Bones, New Science, and Our Favorite Dinosaurs

by Switek, Brian

• ISBN13: 9780374135065
• ISBN10: 0374135061
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2013-04-16
• Publisher: Scientific American / Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Summary

Paleontology meets pop culture in a talented young author's journey into the lives of dinosaurs Dinosaurs haunt museum halls, stomp across movie screens, and adorn just about any product you can name. Despite groundbreaking discoveries, the dinosaurs of our childhood are entrenched in our minds, and new science struggles to overcome the inaccurate monsters of Jurassic Park. In My Beloved Brontosaurus, the brilliant dinosaur fanatic Brian Switek investigates the tension between dinosaurs as scientific objects and pop-culture icons as he introduces us to the latest theories in paleontology, from how dinosaurs had sex to what colors they were and just how they got so big. To understand why they diedafter 150 million years of successwe need to know how they lived. With infectious enthusiasm, Switek explains that these giant beasts left behind a wealth of information in their bonesand it's only by piecing together these clues that we can begin to understand ourselves. After all, our furry little ancestors lived in the shadow of the dinosaurs. Switek visits excavation sites, museums, and high-tech labs to question what we've long held true about these creatures, weaving in stories from his obsession with dinosaurs that started when he was knee-high to a Stegosaurus. Endearing, surprising, and essential to our understanding of our place on Earth, My Beloved Brontosaurusis a book that science buffs and dinosaur fans will cherish for years to come.

Author Biography

Brian Switek is an online columnist for National Geographic and is the author of Written in Stone. He has written for Smithsonian, Wired, Slate, The Wall Street Journal, Nature, Scientific American, and other publications. His examinations of fossil discoveries have been featured by the BBC and NPR. He lives in Salt Lake City, Utah.

Table of Contents

Prologue: My Dinosaur Life
1. Dragons of the Prime
2. The Secret of Dinosaur Success
3. Big Bang Theory
4. The Dinosaurs, They Are a-Changin’
5. Jurassic Thunder
6. Dinosaur Society
7. Dinosaur Feathers
8. Hadrosaur Harmonics and Tyrannosaur Tastes
9. In the Bones

10. Dinosaurs Undone
Epilogue: My Beloved “Brontosaurus”