(Part 2) Top products from r/Paleontology

Honestly, modern diversity is pretty good and you ought to get your head around how modern animals work before going into the fossil organisms where a lot of the anatomy is pretty speculative. I can speak to vertebrate morphology much better than invertebrate morphology, so my recommendations will focus on that.

1. A good dissection guide would help a lot. Personally, I like the De Iuliis & Pulera guide. It's well-illustrated and pretty generally clear.
   
   
2. Second thing you need is some reference material on biomechanics and general vertebrate morphology. There are a lot of vertebrate morphology textbooks out there, the Bemis text is probably fine for your purposes. A more specialized text on functional morphology (e.g. this one) would probably help a lot as well.
   
   
3. For fossil stuff, the best textbook surveying fossil morphology of vertebrates is probably the Carroll text, but it is incomplete for a lot of taxa. I really like the Gregory text on fish skulls, for example, which may fill in some of the gaps that Carroll leaves out.
   
   Finally, Stuart Sumida is a vertebrate paleontologist and functional morphologist who periodically consults with Disney and other major animation studios on animal & human locomotion. He's part of the reason there's a sea-change in animal (and human) animation quality in Disney films from Lion King onwards. He's got a bunch of animation resources here and periodically offers workshops for animators. His slides are mostly pretty text-sparse but there may be something of use in there.

This is what I would recommend:

http://www.amazon.com/Terrestrial-Ecosystems-Through-Time-Evolutionary/dp/0226041557

It's 20 years old, but still good. This is based from the Smithsonian, they have a terrestrial ecosystem working group there and this was a publication by them. Check out the table of contents, it covers what you're interested in pretty closely.

It gives an overview of the problems, as well as how we know what we know, and a lot of detail as well into what was going on through time.

There has certainly been plenty of follow up work since then, but that's fairly easy to find with a literature search.

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.

This book: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0375824197?ie=UTF8&tag=laelaps-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0375824197

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The author, Tom Holtz, is honestly one of the most enthusiastic people in the field and this is a book that can grow with your son.

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https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0142411930?ie=UTF8&tag=laelaps-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0142411930

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This one is aimed at slightly younger audiences (squarely at the 8 year old demographic, actually) and is full of the sorts of facts and stuff that kids love to trot out when talking to grownups.

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Another thing I would recommend is, before you go to the museum, try get in touch with the curators or somebody in charge of outreach programs. We're all busy people but most of us are willing to take a moment out of our day to show a kid around behind the scenes, and if there's an active docent program at the museum you can also get a special tour of front of house stuff too.

Here's some good books about Pleistocene Megafauna:

Pleistocene Mammals of Europe is really good but a bit old.

Amazon Link: https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0202309533/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1500182591&sr=8-1&pi=AC_SX236_SY340_FMwebp_QL65&keywords=pleistocene+mammals+of+europe

Quaternary Extinctions: A Prehistoric Revolution is really good but it's some serious reading

Amazon Link: https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0816511004/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1500183028&sr=8-1&pi=AC_SX236_SY340_QL65&keywords=quaternary+extinctions&dpPl=1&dpID=51NF6ATE7JL&ref=plSrch

(Sorry about the length of the links)

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.

25 Fossils (https://www.amazon.com/Story-Life-25-Fossils-Evolution/dp/0231171919/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1522703337&sr=1-1&keywords=25+fossils)

It's probably the most accessible, easy-to-understand paleo book geared towards adults that I've come across. I use it when I teach my upper-level undergrad students, and then I gave a copy to my non-science mother who loved it...so all spectrums covered.

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

Yeah idk but there are many transitional body heat systems, i.e. large open-ocean sharks & tuna have very efficient body heat generating systems that elevates their body temperature, but aren't full blown endothermic, cannot remember the fancy term for it. Dinocephalians may have had somewhat elevated temperatures, but don't quote me on it- know there's enough debate of whether therapsids even had hairs or just whiskers let alone their body temperature regulation (but maybe there have been strides made since I was last into permian synapsids a few years back?)

Highly reccommend this book for trends about tetrapods (& animals in general, but emphasis on tetrapods- why's about size, island evolution phenomena, body temperature regulation, exagerrated features, etc.): https://www.amazon.com/Why-Elephants-Have-Ears-Understanding/dp/0312269021

Prothero's "Bringing Fossils to life" was one of the into textbooks we used when I took an undergrad invertebrate paleontology class and it is a good introduction. The other book we used was exclusively an invertebrate paleo book, but this one has a decent amount of vertebrate stuff as the author himself researches fossil mammals and Cenozoic stratigraphy.

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

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

This one's fiction - sort of Jurassic Park on 'roids.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07WC7FJ4B/ref=x_gr_w_glide_bb_sout?ie=UTF8&tag=x_gr_w_glide_bb_sout-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=B07WC7FJ4B&SubscriptionId=1MGPYB6YW3HWK55XCGG2

https://www.deviantart.com/jes86/art/AGE-OF-MONSTERS-809036276

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.

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:

• Science Trek: Dinosaur basics (5:51)
  
• PBS Secrets of the Dead: Graveyard of the Giant Beasts (55:10)
  
• PBS NOVA: The Lost Killer - Bigger Than T.rex (51:56)
  
• PBS NOVA: Arctic Dinosaurs (51:29)
  
• PBS THE DINOSAURS! The Monsters Emerge part 1 of 4 (56:11) (1992)
  
• PBS THE DINOSAURS! Flesh on the Bones part 2 of 4 (56:12) (1992)
  
• PBS THE DINOSAURS! The Nature of the Beast part 3 of 4 (56:02) (1992)
  
• PBS THE DINOSAURS! The Death of the Dinosaurs part 4 of 4 (55:61) (1992)
  
  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).