A Field Guide to Dinosaurs The Essential Handbook for Travelers in the Mesozoic

Sensational discoveries during the past decade have shed new light on the most intimate details of dinosaurs’ lives, including their appearance and behavior, their family structures, and their sex lives. The latest dinosaur findings present a far more vivid and complete picture of this extraordinarily successful group of animals than would have been thought possible only a few years ago. Recent findings in South America, Madagascar, Mongolia, China, and Australia have revealed the existence of amazing and exotic dinosaurs. Paleontologist Henry Gee and artist Luis Ray have seamlessly integrated all of the most recent discoveries in the making of this unique book. In A Field Guide to Dinosaurs, Renowned dinosaur artist Luis V. Rey and paleontologist and writer Henry Gee use up-to-the-minute research findings to paint a vivid picture of the dinosaurs’ world. Their unique approach gives readers lifelike portrayals of dinosaurs similar to that of naturalists in the wild, observing living animals of our own era. Readers will experience dinosaurs as living, breathing creatures, with each kind described “from the field” and shown in breathtaking illustrations. Dinosaur physiology is shown in full-color paintings, anatomical sketches, and a host of fascinating incidental detail, much of it never published outside specialist journals. Readers will understand the dinosaurs’ environment in terms of the world’s changing face throughout the 180-million-year extent of the dinosaur-dominated Mesozoic Era, with a detailed, full-color chart that relates the time span of each dinosaur group. The book also includes at-a-glance icons that convey information about different dinosaur groups, including size, taxonomy, geological period, and geographical origins.