Dinosaurs: A Concise Natural History

David E. Fastovsky, David B. Weishampel9780521889964, 0521889960, 9780521719025

From the authors of The Evolution and Extinction of the Dinosaurs comes an introduction to the study of dinosaurs for non-specialists designed to excite readers about science by using dinosaurs to illustrate and discuss geology, natural history and evolution. While focusing on dinosaurs it also uses them to convey other aspects of the natural sciences, including fundamental concepts in evolutionary biology, physiology, life history, and systematics. Considerable attention is devoted the nature of science itself: what it is, what it is not, and how science can be used to investigate particular kinds of questions. Dinosaurs is unique because it fills a gap between the glossy, fact-driven dinosaur books and the higher-level academic books, addressing the paleontology of dinosaurs exactly as professionals in the field do.