Dinosaurs
Subtitle: a concise natural history
By: David E. Fastovsky, David B. Weishampel
Contributors: Weishampel, David B., 1952-
Edition: 2nd ed.
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Published: 2012
Place of publication: Cambridge; New York
Language: eng
ISBN-13: 9780521282376
Subjects: Dinosaurs; Evolution; Paleontology; Vertebrates; Extinction; SCIENCE / Life Sciences / Zoology / General
Description: "Updated with the material that instructors want, Dinosaurs continues to make science exciting and understandable to non-science majors through its narrative of scientific concepts rather than endless facts. Now with new material on pterosaurs, an expanded section of the evolution of the dinosaurs, and new photographs to help students engage with geology, natural history, and evolution. The authors ground the text in the language of modern evolutionary biology, phylogenetic systematics, and teach students to examine the paleontology of dinosaurs exactly as the professionals in the field do using these methods to reconstruct dinosaur relationships"--
Table of contents: title: Machine generated contents note: Why a natural history of dinosaurs?; Part I. Reaching Back in Time: 1. To catch a dinosaur; 2. Dinosaur days; 3. Who's related to whom - and how do we know?; 4. Who are the dinosaurs?; Part II. Ornithischia: Armored, Horned, and Duckbilled Dinosaurs: 5. Thyreophorans: the armor-bearers; 6. Marginocephalia: bumps, bosses, and beaks; 7. Ornithopoda: the tuskers, antelopes and 'mighty ducks' of the Mesozoic; Part III. Saurischia: Meat, Might, and Magnitude: 8. Sauropodomorpha: the big, the bizarre, and the majestic; 9. Theropoda I: nature red in tooth and claw; 10. Theropoda II: the origin of birds; 11. Theropoda III: early birds; Part IV. Endothermy, Endemism, and Extinction: 12. Dinosaur thermoregulation: some like it hot; 13. The flowering of the Mesozoic; 14. A history of paleontology through ideas; 15. Dinosaurs: in the beginning; 16. The Cretaceous-Tertiary extinction: the frill is gone; Glossary; Index of subjects; Index of genera.