Best dinosaurs biology books according to redditors
We found 116 Reddit comments discussing the best dinosaurs biology books. We ranked the 55 resulting products by number of redditors who mentioned them. Here are the top 20.
We found 116 Reddit comments discussing the best dinosaurs biology books. We ranked the 55 resulting products by number of redditors who mentioned them. Here are the top 20.
Feathers. Check out this delightful book on Mesozoic Birds for some other cool ideas.
He also wrote an excellent book on pterosaurs too
I know of a few books that might suit your needs pretty well. The DK Prehistoric Life Book is a pretty massive tome with info on loads of different dinosaurs and prehistoric plants and animals. There's also the Princeton Field Guide to Dinosaurs which is just about dinosaurs and is more sciency looking, but its more quantity over quality when it comes to dinosaur descriptions and the writer has some odd theories about Dinos that he injects here and there.
*ninja edit
I've recommended it before, but My Beloved Brontosaurus is structured around this very thought—what did you used to know, and what has changed since then. It's a very accessible read and I highly endorse it.
Last month while finishing up a Yellowstone vacation, I stopped at the Museum of the Rockies in Bozeman, MT. (Sorry for the potato quality of some of the photos - I always struggle taking handheld pictures with no flash in low-light conditions.)
I was extremely impressed by the their dinosaur collection - the Triceratops collection was particularly amazing.
I've lived on the East coast all of my life, and between the American Museum of Natural History in NYC, the Smithsonian and Yale's Peabody museum, I've been spoiled by world-class dinosaur collections. Even so, the Museum of the Rockies did not disappoint - it's definitely worth a visit.
EDIT: I should mention that I particularly wanted to see the museum's Triceratops fossil collection after reading about it in Brian Switek's recent book, My Beloved Brontosaurus. Triceratops has been one of my favorite dinos since I was a kid (I'm sure everyone can remember seeing pictures of a T-Rex / Triceratops faceoff from a childhood dinosaur book).
The dramatic shape changes that Triceratops' frill and horns underwent as it aged were fascinating - I'd love to know the reasons for the them, especially how the two top horns changed direction from pointing upward to downward.
This is probably your best bet. There is a lot of literature out there on this, but just to name a few sources:
UCMP Berkley has a pretty decent overview.
If you can get a hold of it at your local library, The Dinosaur Heresies by Robert T. Bakker helped popularize the notion, and his prescience may help you out a bit. It's dated, but the chapter on dinosaur-bird similarities holds up pretty well today.
Tom Holtz's Dinosaurs has a couple chapters detailing metabolism and bird evolution that should pretty useful.
Finally, there are a lot of paleontology blogs out there written by working paleontologists that talk about this subject in great depth. Use Dave Hone's Archosaur Musings as a starting point then search for your desired subject using the search box, and for more simply check out the links to the right of the page to go to other fairly reputable sites.
Happy homework!
Boom, found it. Thanks so much!!
[for anyone else who's interested. ] (https://www.amazon.com/Dinosaurs-Fantastic-View-Lost-Era/dp/0553013351)
It's mostly speculation based on inferences from modern relatives like birds and crocodiles. It's a subject of ongoing research when specimens are found with discernible head and neck structures.
The book My Beloved Brontosaurus by Brian Switek discusses the subject briefly in chapter 8. The book also covers topics like socialization, sex, and coloring and some other things that have been inferred/discovered from recent research.
I haven't read it yet, but I've heard My Beloved Brontosaurus is pretty good.
If you want novels, Michael Crichton's Jurassic Park and Lost World are pretty good. Arthur Conan Doyle's Lost World is also an interesting read, if you can get past the dated English.
Have you checked out "The Grand Tour: Everything Worth Knowing About Dinosaurs from Aardonyx to Zuniceratops" but it's a pretty good collection of cool dinosaurs.
Grand Tour on Amazon
That guy represents a height of 6 feet (1.83 m). This is from the book Prehistoric Life.
Depending on his interests, here are a few options:
I have this. I like it, and it is fun to thumb through it. But as another user said, shit gets discovered pretty quickly though.
Here’s one: Dinosaurs: How They Lived and Evolved https://www.amazon.com/dp/1588345823/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_3kSZDbEF9ENGD
Dinosaurs: How They Lived and Evolved. Don't let the cover fool you, it's a good book.
My favorite book is definitely Dr. Holtz's Dinosaur Encyclopedia; it's geared towards a high school level, but I know professional paleontologists who use it, it's just an awesome book.
The next step up is The Complete Dinosaur. It's a solid book, technical, but not as highly praised as ...
The Dinosauria
The Dinosauria is the gold standard, but it's incredibly dense. My best suggestion though is to read primary literature about subjects/clades that interest you. Google scholar is pretty useful for this, although paywalls will be an issue off-campus
I don't know as much about online resources, but I've recently run into a book called The Complete Dinosaur. Far from being just superficial dinosaur trivia, it has a lot of scientific papers about the morphology, ecology, evolution, ontogeny, and history of dinosaurs.
I'm not sure if it's the most comprehensive, but The Princeton Field Guide To Dinosaurs is really good.
This is a pretty solid and very enjoyable book about our current understanding of Dinosaurs, including the evolution of birds which came out last year: https://www.amazon.com/Rise-Fall-Dinosaurs-History-World/dp/0062490427
How old is the kid you're getting the book for? Dinosaurs: How They Lived and Evolved is very new and up-to-date, but is probably not ideal for very young kids. Maybe like 11ish up?
I have a copy of Greg Paul's The Princeton Field Guide to Dinosaurs (2010) and I like it quite a bit.. Reasonably up-to-date, lovely art, a diverse selection of dinosaurs... The only one of your criteria it doesn't meet is #4. It's a pretty bulky book.
I stopped getting my wife clothes because I noticed she never wore what I got her. So now I default to:
One of my favorites has been The Complete Dinosaur. It has everything from introduction to the history of dinosaur discovery, to morphology, ecology, behavior, evolution, etc. I found it to be fairly approachable, but still scientific enough to serve as a good educational resource.
If you lookup "after man" on amazon under books ,you will find a few like this by a couple of authors. I think dougal Dixon stole his ideas from Wayne Barlow.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0881623016/ref=mp_s_a_1_5?qid=1463770015&sr=8-5&pi=AC_SX236_SY340_FMwebp_QL65&keywords=after+man&dpPl=1&dpID=51sdYb6qAfL&ref=plSrch
Or
http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0312011636/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?qid=1463770015&sr=8-1&pi=SX200_QL40&keywords=after+man&dpPl=1&dpID=519Mv2qbAgL&ref=plSrch
disclaimer: haven't read it myself https://www.amazon.com/Field-Guide-Mesozoic-Winged-Dinosaurs/dp/0988596504/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1355657512&sr=8-2&keywords=field+guide+mesozoic
I'm currently reading this one http://www.amazon.com/Pterosaurs-Natural-History-Evolution-Anatomy/dp/0691150613/ It is more of a in depth book and specifically on pterosaurs but I find it highly entertaining in writing and pictures as well.
This one?
Gregory Paul's Field Guide to Dinosaurs is pretty big and scientifically accurate for the most part. Some of the length is just brief descriptions of dinosaurs, however, and I wish it went into more depth.
I'm a big fan of Mark Witton and hope to order Recreating an Age of Reptiles soon. For some reason Amazon says it isn't out yet, but it was published a while ago. I find that Witton always does very meticulous research and does a great job of acknowledging and explaining disagreements. While not about dinosaurs, his book Pterosaurs is my favorite paleo book of all time. I love the artwork and it's clear that he has a real passion for these animals. He really goes into detail about different groups of pterosaurs, too. I felt like I learned a lot about pterosaurs reading the book and it really made me excited to read anything else he has written. His blog is also fantastic if you are looking for something to read!
As far as up-to-date, The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs was just released and seems really interesting. It's has less of a textbook/encyclopedia feel than the other books I've recommended here and it seems like it might follow more of a narrative compared to the others which jump between types of dinosaurs. I haven't read it but I've heard good things and am excited to read my copy soon.
Dougal Dixon's books After Man and The New Dinosaurs explore alternative evolution scenarios.
Lots of pictures.
That was a great book that I also highly recommend. Some other suggestions:
https://www.amazon.com/Dinosaurs-How-They-Lived-Evolved/dp/1588345823
https://www.amazon.com/Pterosaurs-Natural-History-Evolution-Anatomy/dp/0691150613
https://www.amazon.com/Sauropod-Dinosaurs-Life-Age-Giants/dp/1421420287/ref=pd_sim_14_5?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_i=1421420287&pd_rd_r=V3DPH072M1JZWPGQW7JN&pd_rd_w=gjt7n&pd_rd_wg=no70V&psc=1&refRID=V3DPH072M1JZWPGQW7JN
Anything by Stephen Jay Gould for evolution, zoology, and earth science. Some of the science is dated - he passed in 2002 - but he always gives a comprehensive read of his subject material without being dry or overly academic.
In particular, Wonderful Life tells the story of the Burgess Shale, which details the discovery of a trove of unknown extinct species. The science has been updated since - see The Crucible of Creation - but Gould tells a better story.
Along these lines, also check out The Dinosaur Heresies by Robert Bakker.
No problem! There was a reprint of After Man in 2018, and it's affordable under $40. Man After Man has indeed been out of print since 1990 and is fairly pricey between $100-300. Dougal Dixon has many other books too such has The New Dinosaurs, If Dinosaurs Were Alive Today, and many other dinosaur related books (many for children.) Most of these are out of print as well and are expensive, but worth it if you're really interested. Maybe you could luck out at your local library and just rent them.
There is however a rare book he made that was only released in Japan for some reason (and of course it's the most badass one) called Greenworld (グリーン・ワールド) about humanity colonizing an alien world and taming certain inhabitants. Although I've never seen Greenworld for sale on English sites, if you know how to order from Amazon Japan you can find the two books in the series for less than $20 a piece.
I linked to some PDF's in my original comment if buying isn't an option.
If you're going for true realism and basing it on a sabre toothed cat, here are a few hints (palaeontologist, recently been brushing up on them).
At the base of the chin there should be flanges on each side (see the sabre toothed marsupial Thylacosmilus, the true sabre toothed cat Megantereon and the nimravid Eusmilus). These most likely evolved in order to protect the teeth whilst the mouth was closed. My supervisor thinks they may also have been brightly coloured and used for sexual selection, but he also thinks Carnotaurus had a frill, which is ridiculously stupid- I won't go into that now though.
The meeting of the trop and bottom jaws at the front between the canines should be a bit lower, and further forward than it is. Sabre-tooths of all forms (true sabre-tooths, nimravids, barbourofelids and thylacosmilids) moved their incisor battery markedly forwards (see Smilodon and Hoplophoneus), presumably to be able to bite meat off of carcasses etc- something modern big cats use their carnassials (side teeth-premolars & molars) for, but the big sabres would have blocked.
The external ears should be slightly lower, but not by much (looking for a good restoration atm).
I love my The Princeton Field Guide to Dinosaurs, it reminds me of that connection everyday. So many skeletons, so much evidence, so many great illustrations, if only more people were aware.
Hi /u/WalterFBishop,
I was a dino-crazy kid, and now I'm a bird-crazy adult, so this topic speaks to my passions! As a result, I've cultivated a list of books I want to read on the subject, but sadly, I haven't read any of these yet. Just the same, here are books I hope to read based on the reviews they've received and apparent comprehensiveness:
all ratings/reviews come from Amazon
Some are pricier than others, as it looks like they're now out-of-print. I'm not sure which of those is the best book on the subject, but that may depend on your preferred reading style and source material. :) I'd recommend clicking on the "Open in Expanded View" option beneath the cover picture of the above books so you can skim a few sample pages to see what speaks to you!
Hope this helps.
Ok ok.. well The Dinosaur Heresies isn't an encyclopedia, but Robert Bakker is the wild man of dinosaurs. I see he has a Picture book. Still, that part where the dinosaur lifts up the roof of Danny's house, that is classic.
I quickly searched and found a book called Prehistoric Life: The Definitive Visual History of Life on Earth . It seems like this is the best one out there.
I don’t know if this is exactly on point but The Rise and Fall of Dinosaurs is a great starting point.
https://www.amazon.com/Rise-Fall-Dinosaurs-History-World/dp/0062490427/ref=nodl_
Amazon.com. For instance, I bought Dinosaurs: A Concise Natural History, which is an undergrad textbook, for $7.25, including shipping. Just search for the books you want and look to the used section in the listing. Most of the ones I've bought on Amazon came from libraries so they have the tough plastic outer jackets on them, which helps reduce wear and tear.
The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs: A New History of a Lost World by Steve Brusatte was a good 10,000 foot introduction. I ended up reading many wikipedia articles about various species and genera mentioned in the book, so I consider it a good springboard. The Audiobook on Audible is really well performed.
PBS has a few good documentaries, too. Some may be a bit outdated, but they're free and fun. Here's a few I found:
If you can find it, I remember enjoying American Experience: The Dinosaur Wars. It's about the early rush into the American West to search for fossils and the intense rivalry between Edward Drinker Cope and Othniel Charles Marsh around 1877-1892 (also known as the Bone Wars).
I think that My Beloved Brontosaurus by Brian Swiftek is a really great book as an introduction to dinosaurs. It goes into the history of the bone wars, the dinosaur renaissance and the differences between dinosaurs in pop culture vs the current scientific evidence. I think it should be on the sidebar for sure.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Complete-Book-Dinosaurs-Illustrations-Photographs/dp/1780190379/ref=asc_df_1780190379/?tag=googshopuk-21&linkCode=df0&hvadid=310848077451&hvpos=1o14&hvnetw=g&hvrand=16757418086549347193&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=&hvdev=t&hvdvcmdl=&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=9046483&hvtargid=pla-453340283747&psc=1&th=1&psc=1
This is the one I had and still own today. It’s about 15 years old and still the best damn Dino book I own.
I actually just searched for this sub with this exact question in mind! However I was thinking of something that introduced species chronologically, (i.e. starts with the messy buggers in the pre-cambrian, and works it's way through as much as we know).
Basically sparked by reading up on saber-toothed cats and finding out they're not actually Felidae, and I realised that while I absolutely love reading about pre-historic life, I really don't have much basis in knowing fully the various branches of life that have existed. Convergent evolution is amazing to read about, but so is evolution itself!
Just wish-listed these three books (1, 2, 3) on amazon, wondering if anyone could recommend if any of those might be what I'm looking for in terms of prehistoric life overall (and not just dinosaurs, though dinosaurs are obviously super cool too) but also possibly recommend any, as I know these are very broad overview encyclopedia's with pretty pictures. Don't mind detail and complexity, but not that interested in the process of excavations and such as it relates to palaeontology.
The Earth's historical climate would pass mostly the same as it actually did. There would have been a warm period in the Eocene, and an ice age in the Pleistocene. The continents would have moved into the same configuration they are now.
Dinosaurs would have changed greatly over the millions of years and it's impossible to predict what they would have evolved into but look up the book The New Dinosaurs By Dougal Dixon for some speculative evolution fun .
The book list just keeps growing in so many different directions that it's hard to identify which I want to tackle next (I also have a tendency to take meticulous notes while I read and that slows the process down even further!). Some of the topics I intend to read about once I'm done with the books mentioned:
Plus a bunch of books by Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens, Carl Sagan, and others. There are way too many. And all the fiction books I want to read too! It's not that I didn't read books before, but my faith transition has sparked an intense desire to study and learn far greater than I ever experienced before.
Here is the mobile version of your link
I’m a fan of this book: https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/069113720X/ref=mp_s_a_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1520221912&sr=8-2&pi=AC_SX236_SY340_QL65&keywords=princeton+dinosaurs&dpPl=1&dpID=510YxguboxL&ref=plSrch
I'll second James Gurney's books, his blog and his "In the Wild" video series.
I really like the Complete Guide to Drawing Animals by Gottfried Bammes. It brought together a lot of concepts about anatomy in art that I hadn't really fully understood until I read it. Similarly, I think Sarah Simblet's Botany for the Artist has beautiful and inspiring art.
I'm a big old paleontology nerd, so I have a lot of books on my shelves with fantastic paleoart: Dinosaur Art, edited by Steve White, is a great showcase of modern paleoartists, and Feathered Dinosaurs is full of gorgeous paintings by Peter Schouten. For drawings of dinosaurs of the non-extinct variety, I'm fond of Katrina van Grouw's The Unfeathered Bird.
And I just got a copy of Shaun Tan's The Bird King and, oh man, I really love it. His imagination is incredible. Highly recommended for when you're in a creative rut.
this sounds similar
Introduction to Paleontology and the fossil record
You can download the .pdf somewhere in a torrent.
A lot of paleontology involves geology so don't forget that! You also want to have a good understanding of the evolution of species as well as the common physiological, morphological traits of the major orders, classes etc.
There are a few other books such as Fossils: A very short introduction which is a short easy to understand book if you have no background knowledge.
There are a bunch of textbooks that you can find online in .pdf format.
Possibly the greatest coffee table book ever would be this which is packed full of information, pictures, illustrations, 3D models on all of life from the very beginning of life (pre-cambrian) all the way to modern humans. It also includes the formation and early history of Earth.
In paleontology you would rarely find a complete fossil. You have to rely on the small pieces of the puzzle and try to figure out what the rest of the animal would look like based on clues given from modern animals. It's sort of like being given a book but 90 percent of the pages have been torn out and you must figure out what happened in the rest of the story based on the 10 percent of the book that is left.
I'm not an expert but this thread was empty and since for the past month I've become obsessed with natural history I figured I'd comment.
I know it is not an answer to your question for good books to further your education, but a good Sci-Fi Author to check out would be Frederik Pohl. Specifically, The World at the End of Time was a really good book. It has probably some of the best descriptions of relativistic effects of any Sci-Fi I have read. I'd also recommend continuing to read the Rama series. It gets a bit.. different... when Clarke isn't writing it, but it is still worth a read. Also, finish the Odyssey series if you haven't (2010, 2061, and 3001). Shelly's Frankenstein (not any of the movies, although Young Frankenstein with Gene Wilder is a funny spoof that I'd recommend) is worth a read. The book is completely different from most popular adaptations of it. Also, there are several good Sci-Fi writers here on reddit, and /r/WritingPrompts usually has interesting stuff going on in it.
Finally, here is a list of Non-fiction Dinosaur books: http://www.goodreads.com/list/show/17226.The_Best_Non_fiction_Dinosaur_Books, with http://www.amazon.com/Dinosaurs-Concise-Natural-David-Fastovsky/dp/052171902X/ being a good book too, I hear.
Hey, it doesn't look like anyone got back to you about the dinosaurs (or I'm just too lazy to check all the sub-threads)
Here are two textbooks that are sometimes used:
Read this book, it's very easy to follow and very absorbing.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Flying-Dinosaurs-Fearsome-Reptiles-Became/dp/0231171781/ref=sr_1_24?ie=UTF8&qid=1505919515&sr=8-24&keywords=dinosaur+birds
That last book, the encyclopedia is a bit outdated now. There's a new version out.
This is the second edition.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Complete-Dinosaur-Second-Life-Past/dp/0253357012/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1536367661&sr=1-1&keywords=the+complete+dinosaur
I'm in the same boat as you and have been researching on Amazon. So far I've come up with:
http://www.amazon.com/Princeton-Field-Guide-Dinosaurs-Guides/dp/069113720X
http://www.amazon.com/Dinosaurs-Prehistoric-Animals-Smithsonian-Handbooks/dp/0789493616/
http://www.amazon.com/Dinosaurs-Complete-Up-Date-Encyclopedia/dp/0375824197/
http://www.amazon.com/Dinosaurs-Concise-Natural-David-Fastovsky/dp/052171902X/
What level course is this? Undergrad or high school? Do you need to cite the primary scientific literature or are you allowed to use popular media sources? If the latter, go to your local bookstore or library and see if they have: http://www.amazon.com/Prehistoric-Life-Definitive-Visual-History/dp/0756655730/ It's not going to be sufficient for typical grad or advanced undergrad course citation requirements, but it should fit the bill for lower level courses.
If you need something online, you can try http://www.bbc.co.uk/nature/history_of_the_earth/Paleocene
Both of these can also serve as spring boards for searching Google Scholar or Web of Science for actual scientific papers if you have more stringent source requirements.
I used to read "The New Dinosaurs" as a kid. It's an alternative evolutionary path that dinosaurs might have taken. Has some killer illustrative work to boot!
The New Dinosaurs: An Alternative Evolution https://www.amazon.com/dp/0881623016/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_uGy5ybRMCQV98
They're dinosaurs. I don't know how evolved Emus are, but they're dinosaurs.
I went to a talk the other month by a guy who wrote a book called "Flying Dinosaurs". At one point he put up a slide with this picture, and asked what was scientifically incorrect about the image.
The answer, of course, is that the velociratopor is depicted without feathers.
Thanks! I forgot to mention I have also All Yesterdays, and it is indeed awesome! I also have this which is really cool.
Thanks for the advice. I have The Superorganism by Wilson and Hölldobler, and it's really good. The others I don't know and I will look for!