(Part 3) Best dinosaurs biology books according to redditors

Depending on his interests, here are a few options:

• Model dinosaurs: There are several companies that sell accurate scale models of dinosaurs and other prehistoric life; Safari LTD and Collecta are two of my favorites. Beasts of the Mesozoic are some slightly higher-end poseable raptor models.
  
• If you think he'd be interested in a print of professionally-made dinosaur art, a couple of paleoartists whose sites I could find are Emily Willoughby and Mark Witton.
  
• If he might be into stickers, shirts, or other assorted dinosaur-themed merchandise such as mugs or phone cases: Permia sells shirts, stickers, and cards. Some paleoartists have Redbubble pages or similar. A few I recommend looking at: [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7]
  
• If you think he'd be interested in scientifically accurate plushies, Palaeoplushies might be worth looking at.
  
• Books: There are a wide variety of paleontology-related books. Depending on what he's read, and what he's interested in, here are a few possibilities:
  
  • Books about prehistoric life (mostly dinosaurs) in general:
    
    • Pterosaurs by Mark Witton
      
    • A Field Guide to Mesozoic Birds and Other Winged Dinosaurs by Matt Martyniuk
      
    • The Rise and Fall of Dinosaurs by Steve Brusatte
      
    • The Princeton Field Guide to Dinosaurs by Gregory Paul
      
    • Dinosaurs: How they Lived and Evolved by Darren Naish and Paul Barrett
      
  • Books about paleoart:
    
    • Extreme Dinosaurs 2: The Projects by Luis Rey
      
    • The Palaeoartist's Handbook by Mark Witton
      
    • Recreating an Age of Reptiles by Mark Witton
      
    • All Yesterdays by John Conway, C. M. Kosemen, and Darren Naish

A recent good book is End of the Megafauna by Ross MacPhee, which examines the disappearance of most of the great beasts of the Cenozoic.

Two recent picture-heavy books: the Princeton Field Guide to Prehistoric Mammals and National Geographic: Prehistoric Mammals. The second is aimed at a younger audience but still has plenty of meat for adult readers.

Speaking of younger readers, John Rafferty's The Cenozoic Era: Age of Mammals will give you a good grounding in the geological history of the Cenozoic and what was happening around the world. It's aimed at high school and college students but doesn't at all talk down. Definitely worth the read.

Horned Armadillos and Rafting Monkeys is a deep dive on the isolated fauna of Cenozoic South America.

For a better sense of the actual fossil record, see Bruce Stinchcomb's photo-heavy Cenozoic Fossils books for the Paleogene and the Neogene.

For mammals, I might recommend the following:

http://www.amazon.com/Mammoths-Sabertooths-Hominids-Mammalian-Evolution/dp/0231116411/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1415458322&sr=8-4&keywords=Mauricio+Anton

http://www.amazon.com/Evolving-Eden-Illustrated-Evolution-African/dp/0231119453/ref=sr_1_5?ie=UTF8&qid=1415458322&sr=8-5&keywords=Mauricio+Anton

Both of these have excellent reconstructions of fossil relatives in a number of mammal lineages. They are organized more based on geography than on relationships, but they have a ton of good information.

For the more technical approach I recommend http://palaeos.com/, which tracks a WHOLE bunch of lineages in the animal kingdom through time, cataloging a lot of anatomical data.

Gaining Ground - Devonian origins of tetrapods

The Rise of Fishes - early evolution of fishes with focus on Paleozoic fishes

Earth Defore the Dinosaurs - comprehensive review of the Paleozoic

Dawn of the Dinosaurs - General review of the Triassic, focus on tetrapods. Beautifully illustrated.

The good map of Cali is a an excellent start. You'll want the Mesozoic rocks obviously if you want big dinos (though the Cenozoic rocks will have birds!). I'd recommend this book if you're staying local: http://www.amazon.com/Dinosaurs-Other-Mesozoic-Reptiles-California/dp/0520233158. The west coast is a notoriously poor part of western North America to look for big Mesozoic vertebrates, but good luck!

Worth noting, the title is likely a homage to this...

https://www.amazon.com/Dinosaurs-Darkness-Life-Past-Thomas/dp/0253337739

I don't know how useful Allosaurus' arms were, but it did battle Stegosaurus. An Allosaurus tail vertebra did have a puncture wound made by a Stegosaurus. It also did have a bite force weaker than alligators, lions, and leopards.
Further reading on Allosaurus:
https://palaeo-electronica.org/2009_3/186/index.html
https://www.livescience.com/34556-allosaurus-dinosaur-feeding-technique.html
https://www.livescience.com/45400-dinosaur-healed-battle-wounds-fast.html
https://www.amazon.com/Carnivorous-Dinosaurs-Life-Past/dp/0253345391

Scientific American published a collection of their articles. This contains some very interesting discussion about the process of discovery and deciphering the fossil evidence. This is my number one pick.

Digging Dinosaurs by Jack Horner

The book The Science of Jurassic Park & TLW killed any hope of it ever becoming reality. It's a bummer of a read.

https://www.amazon.com/Science-Jurassic-Park-Lost-World/dp/0060977353/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1481299884&sr=8-2&keywords=science+of+jurassic+park

Thanks, I didn't know the feet were a big factor, I thought it was more the bones and hip structure? Although I know nothing about vertebrate paleo. My paleo prof had some inferiority issues with the vertebrate guys and didn't go near it.

I recently picked up Rise and Fall of the the Dinosaurs by Brusatte. I'm looking forward to reading it, but I have 2 kids under two, so my reading time is at an all time low.

I don’t know if you’ve ever seen old paleoart, but the idea was that Sauropods “walked” along the bottoms of lakes and rivers eating soft plants on the bottoms and then used their heads as snorkels just like I said. Again, just like I said, blue whales aren’t breathing underwater, they are breathing on the surface. Water pressure increases exponentially, even though Blue whales are much more massive, it doesn’t matter. I’m not making this up, this is a quit commonly understood biomechanic that was taught to me by my Paleontology professors and pretty awesomely conveyed in this great book that you can buy and educate yourself with. Also, maybe work on your conversations skill my guy.

https://www.amazon.com/Dinosaurs-Textbook-Spencer-Lucas/dp/0231173113/ref=asc_df_0231173113/?tag=hyprod-20&linkCode=df0&hvadid=312168166316&hvpos=1o3&hvnetw=g&hvrand=15399275414861717072&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=&hvdev=m&hvdvcmdl=&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=1026489&hvtargid=pla-471552448217&psc=1

I know exactly what you're talking about. I had one of these puppies come with an old Compaq Presario I had as my first PC.

Upon a little Googling, I found they were produced by DK Publishing. Mine was called Eyewitness Virtual Reality: Dinosaur Hunter and you were in a dinosaur museum with several activities ranging from simple "fifteen" sliding puzzles to this rather large game that involved entering an excavation shaft to find and piece together fossils which, when found, would become live dinosaurs that would randomly roam the museum.