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Journal of Paleontology

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The Dinosauria

¹ Structure and Motion Laboratory, The Royal Veterinary College ,University of London Hatfield, Hertfordshire AL9 7TA United Kingdom

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The Dinosauria (second edition). D.B. Weishampel, P. Dodson, and H. Osmólska, eds. 2004. University of California Press, Berkeley, 861 p. ISBN 0-520-24209-2. $95; hardbound with many illustrations.

Standing out among the glut of dinosaur books that has swamped the market in recent years, the new edition of The Dinosauria, much like the first edition, is the book that most scientists and amateurs would agree is the number one "must have" for anyone seriously interested in dinosaur paleontology. Of course, this is not a book for kids, or even for semi-interested adults. This is a serious, scholarly tome that straddles the boundary between review and primary literature. Many concepts and data in it see their first time in print, but most of it is an up-to-date (as of 2002–2003 at least) synthesis of what we know about dinosaurs, especially anatomy, systematics, and related areas like biogeography. Judging from the previous edition, this one will be extremely widely cited in technical dinosaur papers. It is the first book that a graduate student or other researcher doing anything connected with dinosaur paleontology should purchase, without hesitation. I look back fondly on how important the first edition was for my Ph.D. years in Berkeley; I often referred to it on a weekly basis, and used those 733 pages voraciously. It was often the first stop for any information on any dinosaur taxon. So here we are with the second edition, which came out in Fall 2004 to much fanfare at the Society for Vertebrate Paleontology meeting and on the Dinosaur Mailing List (to which I owe thanks for its detailed coverage; search the October–November 2004 archives at http://dml.cmnh.org). Has dinosaur science changed that much in just 14 years to warrant an 861-page behemoth?

Of course, if you follow dinosaur research or have read . . . [Full Text of this Article]