Thames & Hudson The Dinosaurs Rediscovered: How a Scientific Revolution is Rewriting History

Picture this: a ginger feathered dinosaur with a striped orange and white tail perched in a tree like the Cheshire Cat of his time – or dashing across the landscape like Road Runner dressed in modish cowboy-trousers of black, white and red. Is this an early bird of paradise? and how might a T-Rex compare with a six-tonne chicken?Whatever you think you know about dinosaurs from your childhood, it's time to update! Dinosaurs have changed a lot in the last ten years – or our understanding of them at least – and world expert Benton crams fifty years of smart thinking applied to old speculation between the covers, tracking dinosaur science's move from natural history to testable scientific discipline. Both new fossils and new technologies offering computational models in macroevolution and inferences from an evolutionary tree across geological timescales have added to the data-rich detail available to paleobiologists. From teeth to terrain, lessons from engineering and electromicroscopy have also enhanced our understanding of dinosaurs for the twenty-first century.This overview of the rocky road to our current understanding of these giant lizards (and other animals) pulls together research and commentary from scientists around the globe with differing specialisms to offer a modern identity parade drawn from both lush and arid environments of the earth over 200 million years when dinosaurs of all shapes and sizes roamed the earth. It’s well illustrated with black-and-white dinosaurs and their key points every few pages and a couple of sets of coloured plates, and its persuasively pieced together by a leading paleontologist. Presented with precision, this book both details the past including the occasional light-hearted anecdote, and looks ahead to future research with a spirit of open-mindedness.

I saw another reviewer in another publication describe this book as frustrating and I can understand why he said that. Benton delivers a mixture of gripping, easy to understand information and quite arcane dinoscience (and science in general) that is way over my head. As an interested layperson who wants to know what the current situation in dinoscience land is I feel I have been given too many diagrams and explanations that are more targeted to serious students of this subject and perhaps also to Benton's colleagues. I have mixed feelings about the number of times he mentions the names of colleagues and former students who have become colleagues. I like that he gives them due recognition, but I (as a reader) don't have to see their names 5 to 10 times. Notwithstanding those drawbacks I recommend this book wholeheartedly.

I bought this for my older brother (he is around 20), and he read the whole thing. I also read a little portion at the front to make sure it was the right sort of content before buying, and I was a little interested too! Definitely worth the money and just detailed enough for older readers without getting too complex.

Gave this as a gift to my father (we both love dinosaurs), and despite being a painfully slow reader, he devoured this book in a month! I picked it out on a whim based on the title, topic, cover and reviews, and apparently that worked as he said it was fascinating. The right blend of scientific insight with companionable tone that kept it from being a dry read - informative without being dull, perfect!

Dinosaurs are interesting to me and my son, so I decided to go and see Mr MJ Benton at Hay Festival glad I did he was just fascinating and very knowledgeable on his topic of Dinosaurs, So I bought his book. It is a great book for Dino lovers. 5 stars.