The evolution and extinction of the dinosaurs

Author(s)

Bibliographic Information

The evolution and extinction of the dinosaurs

David E. Fastovsky, David B. Weishampel ; with illustrations by John Sibbick

Cambridge University Press, 2005

2nd ed.

  • : hbk

Available at  / 3 libraries

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Note

Includes bibliographical references and indexes

Description and Table of Contents

Description

This 2005 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

  • Preface to the second edition
  • Part I. Setting the Stage: 1. Introduction
  • 2. Back to the past: the Mesozoic era
  • 3. Discovering order in the natural world
  • 4. Interrelationships of vertebrates
  • 5. The origin of Dinosauria
  • Part II. Ornithischia: Armored, Horned, and Duck-Billed Dinosaurs: 6. Stegosauria: hot plates
  • 7. Ankylosauria: mas and gas
  • 8. Pachycephalosauria: ramroads of the Cretaceous
  • 9. Ceratopsia: horns and all the frills
  • 10. Ornithopoda: the tuskers, antelopes, and 'mighty ducks' of the Mesozoic
  • Part III. Saurischia: Predators and Giants: 11. Sauropodomorpha: the big, the bizarre, and the majestic
  • 12. Theropoda I: nature red in tooth and claw
  • 13. Theropoda II: the origin of birds
  • 14. Theropoda III: the early evolution of birds
  • Part IV. Endothermy, Environments, and Extinction: 15. Dinosaur thermoregulation: some like it hot
  • 16. Patterns in dinosaur evolution
  • 17. Reconstructing extinctions: the art of science
  • 18. The Cretaceous-Tertiary extinction: the frill is gone
  • Glossary
  • Subject index
  • Generic index
  • Author index.

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