The Evolution and Extinction of the Dinosaurs

2. Auflage 2005
ISBN: 978-0-521-81172-9
Verlag: Cambridge University Press

Buch, Englisch, 500 Seiten, Format (B × H): 221 mm x 286 mm, Gewicht: 1505 g

This 2005 edition of The Evolution and Extinction of the Dinosaurs is a unique, comprehensive treatment of this fascinating group of organisms. It is a detailed survey of dinosaur origins, their diversity, and their eventual extinction. The book can easily be used as a teaching textbook for a class, but it is also written as a series of readable, entertaining essays covering important and timely topics appealing to non-specialists and all dinosaur enthusiasts: birds as 'living dinosaurs', the new feathered dinosaurs from China, 'warm-bloodedness'. Along the way, the reader learns about dinosaur functional morphology, physiology, and systematics using cladistic methodology - in short, how professional paleontologists and dinosaur experts go about their work, and why they find it so rewarding. The book is spectacularly illustrated by John Sibbick, a world-famous illustrator of dinosaurs, commissioned exclusively for this book.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Fastovsky, David E.

Weishampel, David B.

Weitere Mitwirkende

Sibbick, John

Fachgebiete

• Geowissenschaften Geologie Paläobotanik
• Naturwissenschaften Biowissenschaften Biowissenschaften Evolutionsbiologie
• Geowissenschaften Geologie Paläoökologie
• Geowissenschaften Geologie Paläozoologie
• Geowissenschaften Geologie Paläontologie, Taphonomie

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Preface to the second edition; Part I. Setting the Stage: 1. Introduction; 2. Back to the past: the Mesozoic era; 3. Discovering order in the natural world; 4. Interrelationships of vertebrates; 5. The origin of Dinosauria; Part II. Ornithischia: Armored, Horned, and Duck-Billed Dinosaurs: 6. Stegosauria: hot plates; 7. Ankylosauria: mas and gas; 8. Pachycephalosauria: ramroads of the Cretaceous; 9. Ceratopsia: horns and all the frills; 10. Ornithopoda: the tuskers, antelopes, and 'mighty ducks' of the Mesozoic; Part III. Saurischia: Predators and Giants: 11. Sauropodomorpha: the big, the bizarre, and the majestic; 12. Theropoda I: nature red in tooth and claw; 13. Theropoda II: the origin of birds; 14. Theropoda III: the early evolution of birds; Part IV. Endothermy, Environments, and Extinction: 15. Dinosaur thermoregulation: some like it hot; 16. Patterns in dinosaur evolution; 17. Reconstructing extinctions: the art of science; 18. The Cretaceous–Tertiary extinction: the frill is gone; Glossary; Subject index; Generic index; Author index.