A review by thevampiremars
Dinosaurs Rediscovered: The Scientific Revolution in Paleontology by Michael J. Benton

challenging funny informative inspiring medium-paced

5.0

Dinosaurs Rediscovered is one of the best nonfiction books I’ve had the pleasure of reading. It’s accessible without being patronising, and each chapter is broken down into easily digestible chunks and rounded off with a summary. There are lots of images, too – not just paleoart illustrations, but also diagrams, graphs, and maps. The book concludes with a neat afterword, a fun list of K-Pg extinction hypotheses, a further reading section, and an index.

Despite the title, dinosaurs themselves are not the main focus of this book. Benton chooses instead to explore the ways in which palaeontology has developed from speculation to science over the past few decades, chronicling how advances in technology and methodology have improved our understanding of Mesozoic life.

I adored this book from the very beginning, and I expect it’s one I’ll revisit fairly frequently. It introduced me to ideas I had never come across before, and it offered some fascinating insights I hadn't considered. I did find some chapters more interesting than others, but I think that’s mostly down to personal preference so I can’t really fault the author for that. Five stars.