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wynter's review against another edition
3.0
There is a definite need for more popular science paleobiology works that aim a bit higher than just being a picture-book-type encyclopedia for children. There really isn't much to choose from, and because of that I was super excited to get to The Tyrannosaur Chronicles. While this book is 100% better than your regular reference guide, I still found it a bit lacking in the engagement factor. I kept asking myself, who is this thing written for? It's far too generic in the depth of material covered to be aimed at academics, yet the excessive jargon makes it kind of difficult for a layman. Part two is dedicated solely to the morphology of the species, and has literally a grocery list of anatomical terms. There are paragraphs one after another that sound something along these lines:
"The shoulder begins with the scapula: long, thin bone that lies across numerous dorsal ribs (it is partly anchored to them, thus ultimately holding the arm in place) and runs down to the chest. Here a smaller bone, the coracoid, links to the scapula, and between these bones lies the joint for the humerus, with the scapula and coracoid also providing attachment sites for the arm muscles."
Wait... What? I'm lost in this labyrinthine description.
There is really nothing wrong with going through dino anatomy a bone at a time (though I question the benefit of such endeavour), but a large accompanying diagram might have made this journey slightly easier to follow. I found that this book was not something I could just quickly read through, but would rather need to thoughtfully study. Again, there is nothing wrong with that, but I was not prepared to deal with semantics of every paragraph while reading a popular science book. Ultimately, it did not come alive for me. The tyrant lizards remained dead fossils in this book, despite dealing with all aspects of the species' lives.
Having said that, I think this is a great book, full of valuable information for anyone seriously interested in dinosaurs. It covers everything from anatomy to behaviour, to feeding, to specifics of evolution in nice, succinct chunks. It has wonderfully summarized material sourced from highbrow paleobiological research, that would certainly prove useful to freshmen university students pursuing the career. But as a casual read for dinophiles like me, it might not be the most engaging book.
"The shoulder begins with the scapula: long, thin bone that lies across numerous dorsal ribs (it is partly anchored to them, thus ultimately holding the arm in place) and runs down to the chest. Here a smaller bone, the coracoid, links to the scapula, and between these bones lies the joint for the humerus, with the scapula and coracoid also providing attachment sites for the arm muscles."
Wait... What? I'm lost in this labyrinthine description.
There is really nothing wrong with going through dino anatomy a bone at a time (though I question the benefit of such endeavour), but a large accompanying diagram might have made this journey slightly easier to follow. I found that this book was not something I could just quickly read through, but would rather need to thoughtfully study. Again, there is nothing wrong with that, but I was not prepared to deal with semantics of every paragraph while reading a popular science book. Ultimately, it did not come alive for me. The tyrant lizards remained dead fossils in this book, despite dealing with all aspects of the species' lives.
Having said that, I think this is a great book, full of valuable information for anyone seriously interested in dinosaurs. It covers everything from anatomy to behaviour, to feeding, to specifics of evolution in nice, succinct chunks. It has wonderfully summarized material sourced from highbrow paleobiological research, that would certainly prove useful to freshmen university students pursuing the career. But as a casual read for dinophiles like me, it might not be the most engaging book.
phileasfogg's review against another edition
4.0
When I was a kid, I was very into dinosaurs. I've kept up with them in the media, in a very shallow way. I'd heard that birds were descended from them, and that they probably weren't cold-blooded, as the books of my childhood claimed. I'd heard that some had feathers. But for a long time I've wanted to find a book that would bring me thoroughly up to date.
But modern dinosaur books seem to fall into two categories: picture books for children, and highly technical books for scientists.
I expect that I represent a fairly large market of adult non-scientists who would like to refresh their dinosaur knowledge, in what seems to be a golden age of paleontology.
So I bought this the moment I saw it, and it fulfilled that goal to an extent.
I have been out of touch.
Clades and cladistics now take precedence over the groupings that predominated in the literature in my youth. (The book didn't really explain what clades were--as with many of the technical terms, it assumed, I think, that I'd look it up in Wikipedia, which I did.)
Most spectacularly, birds are not just descended from dinosaurs, they are dinosaurs. So when paleontologists write scientific papers about what we used to call 'dinosaurs' (i.e. the terrible lizards who lived from about 240 to 66 million years ago), they now refer to them as 'non-avian dinosaurs'. Birds are 'avian dinosaurs'. Dinosaurs never became extinct. They are alive and extremely plentiful today.
And yet I think that if I started referring to birds as dinosaurs in real life I might be involuntarily committed.
This is an enjoyable and thorough account of what paleontologists know and suspect about tyrannosaurs, the dinosaur clade that includes the famous Tyrannosaurus rex. There are about 30 species of tyrannosaur, half of which were discovered this century. These are among the most studied dinosaurs, but there is still a lot to learn.
I needed help from Wikipedia to fully understand what I was reading. This is not necessarily a criticism. There are limits to what can be explained in a book about a scientific subject, and the existence of Wikipedia and other online resources means authors don't have to keep explaining the basics in every book about a subject.
I would have liked a lot more illustrations though, especially in the earlier chapters about anatomy, in which the anatomical terminology came thick and fast enough that I couldn't feasibly google every unknown term, and didn't care enough to try. These chapters were interesting not so much for the anatomical detail itself, as for giving a taste of the depth of paleontologists' understanding of dinosaur anatomy.
The book would have benefited much from a technical proofreader. (Is there such a profession? I suppose it's just part of the job description of a technical writer.)
Technical terms are often misspelled. This is a problem in a field where there are such things as a tyrannosaurid and a tyrannosauroid. And once you've caught the book misspelling 'proceratosaurid' as 'proceratsaurid' three times, you're never quite sure if that tyrannosaurid was supposed to be a tyrannosauroid or vice versa. Or indeed if a proceratsaurid might actually be a thing (it isn't). 'Theropod' is misspelled 'therapod' perhaps twenty times.
There were also a few cases of 'I do not think this word means what you think it means', such as when 'benefiting' is plainly supposed to mean 'befitting'. A spellchecker won't find an error like that. Comma splices became fairly common towards the end.
I enjoyed the book enough that I don't like to harp on the negative, but this is the second science book by a scientist I've read this year, and the second that's had these issues.
But modern dinosaur books seem to fall into two categories: picture books for children, and highly technical books for scientists.
I expect that I represent a fairly large market of adult non-scientists who would like to refresh their dinosaur knowledge, in what seems to be a golden age of paleontology.
So I bought this the moment I saw it, and it fulfilled that goal to an extent.
I have been out of touch.
Clades and cladistics now take precedence over the groupings that predominated in the literature in my youth. (The book didn't really explain what clades were--as with many of the technical terms, it assumed, I think, that I'd look it up in Wikipedia, which I did.)
Most spectacularly, birds are not just descended from dinosaurs, they are dinosaurs. So when paleontologists write scientific papers about what we used to call 'dinosaurs' (i.e. the terrible lizards who lived from about 240 to 66 million years ago), they now refer to them as 'non-avian dinosaurs'. Birds are 'avian dinosaurs'. Dinosaurs never became extinct. They are alive and extremely plentiful today.
And yet I think that if I started referring to birds as dinosaurs in real life I might be involuntarily committed.
This is an enjoyable and thorough account of what paleontologists know and suspect about tyrannosaurs, the dinosaur clade that includes the famous Tyrannosaurus rex. There are about 30 species of tyrannosaur, half of which were discovered this century. These are among the most studied dinosaurs, but there is still a lot to learn.
I needed help from Wikipedia to fully understand what I was reading. This is not necessarily a criticism. There are limits to what can be explained in a book about a scientific subject, and the existence of Wikipedia and other online resources means authors don't have to keep explaining the basics in every book about a subject.
I would have liked a lot more illustrations though, especially in the earlier chapters about anatomy, in which the anatomical terminology came thick and fast enough that I couldn't feasibly google every unknown term, and didn't care enough to try. These chapters were interesting not so much for the anatomical detail itself, as for giving a taste of the depth of paleontologists' understanding of dinosaur anatomy.
The book would have benefited much from a technical proofreader. (Is there such a profession? I suppose it's just part of the job description of a technical writer.)
Technical terms are often misspelled. This is a problem in a field where there are such things as a tyrannosaurid and a tyrannosauroid. And once you've caught the book misspelling 'proceratosaurid' as 'proceratsaurid' three times, you're never quite sure if that tyrannosaurid was supposed to be a tyrannosauroid or vice versa. Or indeed if a proceratsaurid might actually be a thing (it isn't). 'Theropod' is misspelled 'therapod' perhaps twenty times.
There were also a few cases of 'I do not think this word means what you think it means', such as when 'benefiting' is plainly supposed to mean 'befitting'. A spellchecker won't find an error like that. Comma splices became fairly common towards the end.
I enjoyed the book enough that I don't like to harp on the negative, but this is the second science book by a scientist I've read this year, and the second that's had these issues.
susanreadstheworld's review against another edition
5.0
Stunning in its depth. I will read it again, and again. There is just so much here, and it all really makes these animals come to life. Bravo!
tbr_the_unconquered's review against another edition
3.0
If popular media is any indication, the Tyrannosaurus rex is a huge celebrity. Movies, merchandise, books and comics focus on this animal and it has been one of the forerunners that introduced what a dinosaur was to the general populace. Keeping all the razzmatazz aside there wasn’t much I knew about the Tyrannosaurs as a family of dinosaurs. Having prided myself to be a dinosaur nut, the biggest revelation to me was that the T-rex is only one among the many species of Tyrannosaurus that roamed the planet. Talk about ignorance !
The subtitle of the book captures it best for the contents cover the biology of the family of theropod dinosaurs in its entirety. The anatomy, possible behavioural patterns, ecosystems that supported this carnivore and also its prey and competition are topics that get covered. While this subject matter appears very interesting at a first glance, the writing style is a tad too academic to support a swift read. David Hone writes in a precise and accurate fashion that edges this book closer to textbook territory than a popular science book. Even with me wanting to understand more about the animal the writing kept me derailed for a big part of the book.
However in defence of the book and also looking at all this objectively this could be the best way to write such a book. These animals are long gone and we will not see them nor hear them again and all that we can do is to tinker around with bones. A lot many of what we know about dinosaurs is based on a few facts, some conjectures, a lot of approximations and ample amounts of guess work. David Hone does not hesitate to call a spade a spade and where he is faced with inadequate data, he makes sure that the reader knows it too. This is contrary to what a lot of popular science articles about dinosaurs admit to since they make definitive assertions about a species where every new fossil find changes things sometimes drastically.
The Tyrannosaur family is a very diverse one ranging from the little Guanlong to the gigantic T-rex and there is a very solid coverage of almost all of these family members here. While the academic approach was a turn off, it was an educating read.
The subtitle of the book captures it best for the contents cover the biology of the family of theropod dinosaurs in its entirety. The anatomy, possible behavioural patterns, ecosystems that supported this carnivore and also its prey and competition are topics that get covered. While this subject matter appears very interesting at a first glance, the writing style is a tad too academic to support a swift read. David Hone writes in a precise and accurate fashion that edges this book closer to textbook territory than a popular science book. Even with me wanting to understand more about the animal the writing kept me derailed for a big part of the book.
However in defence of the book and also looking at all this objectively this could be the best way to write such a book. These animals are long gone and we will not see them nor hear them again and all that we can do is to tinker around with bones. A lot many of what we know about dinosaurs is based on a few facts, some conjectures, a lot of approximations and ample amounts of guess work. David Hone does not hesitate to call a spade a spade and where he is faced with inadequate data, he makes sure that the reader knows it too. This is contrary to what a lot of popular science articles about dinosaurs admit to since they make definitive assertions about a species where every new fossil find changes things sometimes drastically.
The Tyrannosaur family is a very diverse one ranging from the little Guanlong to the gigantic T-rex and there is a very solid coverage of almost all of these family members here. While the academic approach was a turn off, it was an educating read.
marikalla's review
3.0
3 stars.
The writing is about as dry as you probably suspect.
Like:
"The number of teeth in each maxilla and dentary vary in the tyrannosaurs, with each having between 11 and 18 teeth, and there typically being more in smaller, older tyrannosaurs, and fewer in more recent and larger forms" (94).
Despite this, the book is also chock-fool of great information, and the author's passion about sharing his knowledge shines through. I may not have understood all the vocab (no matter how many times I read a sentence over), but hey, I got answers to a lot of the questions I wondered about.
Like, did dinosaurs have feathers since they're bird ancestors?
Though it also left me with other questions, like did dinosaurs have lips, but I suppose that's a question for another day.
Also, apparently pterodactyls weren't actually dinosaurs, who knew? (this guy I guess)
The writing is about as dry as you probably suspect.
Like:
"The number of teeth in each maxilla and dentary vary in the tyrannosaurs, with each having between 11 and 18 teeth, and there typically being more in smaller, older tyrannosaurs, and fewer in more recent and larger forms" (94).
Despite this, the book is also chock-fool of great information, and the author's passion about sharing his knowledge shines through. I may not have understood all the vocab (no matter how many times I read a sentence over), but hey, I got answers to a lot of the questions I wondered about.
Like, did dinosaurs have feathers since they're bird ancestors?
Though it also left me with other questions, like did dinosaurs have lips, but I suppose that's a question for another day.
Also, apparently pterodactyls weren't actually dinosaurs, who knew? (this guy I guess)