Ebook Predatory Dinosaurs of the World: A Complete Illustrated Guide, by Gregory S. Paul
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Predatory Dinosaurs of the World: A Complete Illustrated Guide, by Gregory S. Paul
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- Sales Rank: #1318617 in Books
- Published on: 1989-10
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 9.25" h x 1.50" w x 7.36" l,
- Binding: Paperback
- 464 pages
From Publishers Weekly
Paul thinks dinosaurs are fun, and he conveys his enthusiasm in this well-written account of their life and times. In the first part of the book he describes how the predatory dinosaurs (meat-eating dinosaurs, as opposed to herbivorous dinosaurs) evolved, what they looked like and how they lived. He dispels some commonly held notions: dinosaurs were not cold-blooded, slow or stupid; they were, in fact, the ancestors of birds. The second part of the book is an illustrated catalogue of all important predatory dinosaurs known to date, a new reorganization of predatory dinosaur taxonomy and systematics. Dinosaur are obviously the love of Paul's life, and he sometimes makes us forget that these extraordinary creatures have been extinct for at least 65 million years. In addition, as a paleontologist who does his own illustrations, he can back up his contention that dinosaurs "look neat."
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Most helpful customer reviews
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful.
Great book !
By Stephen W. Templar
This is one of the most important works devoted to predatory dinosaurs ever. The book was a great asset in my own research. Greg Paul is a genius. Buy this book.
Dr. Stephen W. Templar, Author: rexGun rexGun
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful.
Great book !
By Stephen W. Templar
This is one of the most important works devoted to predatory dinosaurs ever. The book was a great asset in my own research. Greg Paul is a genius. Buy this book.
Dr. Stephen W. Templar, Author: rexGun rexGun
7 of 7 people found the following review helpful.
One of the First of Its Kind
By V
Here's an interesting exercise. Conduct a literature search to identify all the SCHOLARLY books published commercially before 1986 that are devoted to special topics (e.g., infinite-dimensional vector spaces) in, say, the fields of mathematics, chemistry, physics, astronomy, genetics, and cellular biology. Expect to turn up items numbering in the hundreds, if not the thousands. Now, conduct a search for all the pre-1986 commercially-published scholarly books devoted exclusively to dinosaurs (henceforth, "SDBs"). You're not likely to come up with more than a single item, William Elgin Swinton's THE DINOSAURS (Thomas Murby & Co., 1934), which went out of print in 1952 but resurfaced briefly in 1968.
Astounding as it may seem, before the publication of Bob Bakker's THE DINOSAUR HERESIES (Citadel, 1986), one could not walk into any book store in the English-speaking world and purchase a TECHNICAL volume devoted entirely to dinosaur paleontology. Prior to 1986, the only such books were treatises published by state or national geological surveys, professional paleontological societies, or museum-affiliated research institutions (example: Charles Whitney Gilmore, OSTEOLOGY OF THE CARNIVOROUS DINOSAURIA IN THE UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM, Bulletin 110 of the United States National Museum [Government Printing Office, 1920]). These treatises were published in limited runs and today are rarely encountered outside of university libraries. Enthusiasts seeking copies for purchase will probably require the good offices of book dealers specializing in out-of-print scientific tracts and must expect to pay dearly.
Of course, there were scads of POPULAR books on dinosaurs published before 1986. These make strange reading today, not so much because they contain antiquated information, but because they contain so LITTLE information even by the standards of the time. Virtually every popular book on dinosaurs was written to formula: first, a chapter on the beginnings of dinosaur paleontology in 19th Century England; next, a chapter on geologic time that introduces the technical names for geochronological eras and periods but never contemplates an interval of time shorter than an epoch, so that in subsequent chapters the reader will think that various dinosaur types (say, Tyrannosaurus rex and Styracosaurus albertensis) were contemporaries (they both lived during the Upper Cretaceous, didn't they?) when in fact they were separated in time by millions of years (the GEOGRAPHIC distribution of dinosaur genera is never discussed, so that the reader hasn't a clue that Triceratops, for example, is an exclusively North American genus); then, a chapter on pre-dinosaur vertebrate evolution (now, we mustn't forget Dimetrodon!) that frequently blurs the concepts of genus and species so that the reader eventually comes away thinking that every dinosaur genus is monospecific (inevitably, the only SPECIES identified in a popular dinosaur book is [drum roll, please] Tyrannosaurus rex [Would anyone care to name ANOTHER species of Tyrannosaurus?]); finally, a chapter (yes, a WHOLE CHAPTER, usually comprising no more than 25 pages!) on dinosaurs that typically surveys ONLY those genera of which complete skeletons are on display (pre-1986, that usually meant late Jurassic and late Cretaceous dinosaurs of western North America); possibly, a chapter on Mesozoic marine reptiles (and sometimes, a chapter on Cenozoic mammals); and lastly, a chapter on dinosaur extinction.
So, since there were no SDBs, what did the pre-1986 dinosaur enthusiast do if he wanted more information than what was offered in popular books? Well, there WERE a few commercially-published scholarly volumes on vertebrate paleontology in general. The main books were: Edwin H. Colbert, EVOLUTION OF THE VERTEBRATES (John Wiley & Sons, 1980 [one chapter on dinosaurs]); Alfred Sherwood Romer, VERTEBRATE PALEONTOLOGY, (University of Chicago, 1966 [one chapter on dinosaurs]); Romer, NOTES AND COMMENTS ON VERTEBRATE PALEONTOLOGY, (University of Chicago, 1969 [one chapter on dinosaurs]); Romer, OSTEOLOGY OF THE REPTILES, (University of Chicago, 1956 [dinosaurs are mentioned in passing throughout the book]).
Everything changed after 1985. First, there was Bakker's book in 1986, followed by Gregory Paul's PREDATORY DINOSAURS OF THE WORLD (PDW) in 1988. And after PDW, the deluge. There are now SDBs on such specialized topics within dinosaur paleobiology as systematics, osteology, bone histology, functional morphology, physiology, reproductive biology, ichnology, and so on.
Paul's PDW has become something of a classic. As of 11/20/2009, Amazon indicates that the hardcover edition is no longer available and lists only one new copy of the paperback edition (for the alarming price of $151.09). As several other Amazon reviewers have noted, the book's contents show their age. I've had occasion to ask Paul whether he intends to produce an updated edition, but he shows little enthusiasm for the project.
PDW nevertheless makes for exceptionally good reading. Although stretches of the book are pitched at a moderately high level of technicality, most of the technicalities are well-explained and further illuminated by Paul's own outstanding anatomical drawings. Paul's writing is highly engaging, even though every so often an infelicity pops out of the text. Pp. 52 - 53: "In 1983, Michael Benton argued that protoarchosaurs and early thecondonts were not really in competition with one another, but this cannot be so because the two groups were out there squabbling over carcasses and competing for game." The preceding sentences and the illustration on p. 52 invite the suspicion that Paul meant to address thecodonts' possible competition with SYNAPSIDS rather than with protoarchosaurs. Furthermore, although the quoted passage can be rewritten to avoid fallacy, it presently stands as a locus classicus of Begging the Question. [By the way, anybody who's tempted to dismiss Paul as a scientific lightweight who can't command a more robust, less reader-friendly style of technical writing may consult his DINOSAURS OF THE AIR (The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002), in which far fewer concessions are made to deficiencies in the layman's background.] Paul isn't afraid of controversy, and he usually makes plausible cases even for his more questionable views. Some of the conjectures in PDW haven't stood up well (example: that spinosaurs may be subsumed phylogenetically under the ceratosauria), but others (example: feathered nonavian coelurosaurs) have panned out pretty spectacularly.
PWD is not the last word, nor even the latest word, on its subject. Be that as it may, the book is several very substantial steps up from a mere popularization: while it does reach out to a more general readership, it still enjoys the respect of professionals and is frequently cited in the bibliographies of paleontological articles in the most rigorously-refereed scientific journals.
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