#paleontology book

[bones-n-bookles]

How the Dog Became the Dog: From Wolves to Our Best Friends, by Mark Derr, 2011

A holiday gift if I remember correctly

[dinodanicus]

A photo of the hyper evolved velociraptor, Beatrice Quill back from her extended stay off world. she works as a professor of dinosaur behavioral science at the National Museum of Natural History in Washington D.C. Since her tenure she has revolutionized mankind's understanding of the prehistoric world while also keeping the museums rodent population under control.

[miriamforster]

I HEARD Y’ALL LIKE SHARKS

Well I ALSO have a big pretty shark book, and it’s 50% on Amazon as of this posting.

[atomic-chronoscaph]

The How and Why Wonder Book of Dinosaurs - art by Kenyon Shannon (1960)

[mokeonn]

Eusthenopteron in hats

[smiggles]

New charms that will be coming to my store soon

Etsy Big Cartel

[mooneyedmoth]

I have no idea what I'm doing

[i-draws-dinosaurs]

Hey so the Dinosaur Autism has reawakened and I really really want to learn properly about dinosaurs. Is there a good book that's like an intro to the field? (I'm thinking of Stuff Matters, which is a really good intro to my field of materials science. It explains really important concepts in layman's terms, and covers simple things like concrete as well as cool novel materials like aerogel. I think every field should have a Stuff Matters.)

I don't want to just google "how to learn about dinosaurs" or whatever because that will be very overwhelming, so I thought I'd ask for some good starting points

I will always give a strong recommendation to Dinosaurs: How They Lived and Evolved by Darren Naish and Paul Barrett! It's the most up to date and comprehensive popular science book about dinosaurs out there right now, and the writing level is pitched towards the scientifically-interested layperson. It also has a lot of beautiful art by a variety of palaeoartists that portray modern thoughts on dinosaur appearance! There's the original 2016 edition and a revised and updated 2018 second edition, both of which give an excellent overview of dinosaur science although obviously the 2018 edition is a bit more up to date!

Another one is The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs by Steve Brusatte. I haven't personally read this one, but I have read his subsequent book The Rise and Reign of the Mammals and I was very pleased with the way he introduces scientific concepts the reader may not be familiar with. He provides a great deal of information about the animals themselves, but also talks a lot about the practical science of palaeontology in the field and the lab, which is honestly something that deserves more coverage! So based on my knowledge of his other work and positive reviews I've seen for his dinosaurs volume, I think this one is also well worth a read!

If anyone else has any good recommendations feel free to drop em in the notes!

[asphodeline-lutea]

I did something

Sorry Paleozoic fans and httyd book fans >:]

Explanation:

This is the only fossil of Schinderhannes bartelsi, "the last anomalocaris" from the early Devonian period.

When it was found, the fossil had been pyritized, turning it a color of gold.

The words are taken from the novel How to Betray a Dragon's Hero, the 11th book of the series How to Train Your Dragon.

Here the protagonist is writing in his memoir about a character who sacrificed his life for him.

[bones-n-bookles]

Dogs: Their Fossil Relatives & Evolutionary History, by Xiaoming Wang and Richard H. Tedford, illustrated by Mauricio Antón, 2008

Bought new at the La Brea Tar Pits museum, another book I cherish and want to reread and catch up on the science since published

[stone-cold-groove]

Illustration detail from the Album of Prehistoric Animals - 1974.

[troythecatfish]

Here’s my personal recommendation of a YouTube video to check out:

[kiyosho-art]

CONNECTED SKIES VOLUME 1 COMING SOON

Keep your eyes peeled! The 330-ish page first volume of Connected Skies (dinosaur graphic novel) will drop soon! In paperback and digital download. Who's interested?

Art in post by Jigziejam. This art is of the main character, Zukus!

[cypressure]

Have you got any recommendations for dinosaur nonfiction books?

Your art makes me so happy 🥺

hey thank you, i appreciate your saying so (and also giving me the opportunity to talk about dinosaur books)! under the cut for length--

starting off with an overview before getting down to specific topics, my first recommendation is Dinosaurs: How They Lived and Evolved by Darren Naish & Paul Barrett. this was first published in 2017, but the third edition was just released with plenty of updates to reflect new discoveries and hypotheses. it's very thorough and accessible, and takes you through all the major clades of dinosaurs and everything we know about their evolution and ecology. this is definitely the best starting point for getting up-to-date with dinosaur science.

the end-Cretaceous extinction has been getting lots of popular attention lately (thanks to DePalma and the Tanis site I suspect), so if you'd like to learn more on this subject, I love The Last Day of the Dinosaurs by Riley Black, also from 2022. this is the scariest dinosaur book i've ever read--she paints an incredibly vivid and horrifying picture of the aftermath of the meteor impact, and of how the animals which survived the event managed to live on.

if you want to read about how exactly we know all these things about dinosaurs, I just recently picked up Dave Hone's How Fast Did T. rex Run? (titled The Future of Dinosaurs in the UK i think), published in 2022. he delves into what we know from the fossil record and how paleontologists work to figure these things out, as well as what we don't know yet and what we probably will never know, and the difference between those two. i suggest it for learning about paleontology as a scientific process, and it's a very interesting read.

so far, all of these books have been about dinosaurs as a whole; if you are looking for popular publications about specific groups, there are not as many options unfortunately (for some reason there isn't a huge audience for 200-page books about obscure thyreophorans. sighs disappointedly). most of what we get is about the large, more familiar clades; you will see books on tyrannosaurs, and there's a few field guide-style books about Mesozoic birds (which tend to be very beautifully illustrated but kind of technical; see below for titles). my pick for clade-specific books is The Sauropod Dinosaurs: Life in the Age of Giants, by Mark Hallett and Matthew Wedel, from 2016. this one goes into serious detail about every conceivable aspect of sauropod paleobiology, which as you can imagine is a huge and fascinating topic, and all the artwork is gorgeous. caveat: it being 8 years old means there's some science in there which will be outdated by now, but as far as i can remember it's still worth checking out.

and finally, as a paleoartist, i have to mention paleoart books! if you're interested in the science behind the choices paleoartists make when reconstructing extinct animals, especially for your own practice, i cannot recommend enough Mark Witton's The Paleoartist's Handbook, from 2018. he thoroughly explains how to interpret fossil evidence and paleontological research from an artist's perspective, and covers about everything from soft tissues to composing a scene. this is one of less than a handful of books on this particular topic, and it's definitely the most in-depth.

with any scientific subject you have to be careful with older books; this is especially true with paleontology since the discipline has accelerated so much over the past few decades and shows no signs of slowing down. i would even hesitate to recommend anything published more than 10 years ago, since new discoveries and technology have made so many questions and hypotheses moot (and in turn created new and more interesting ones)! the only exception to this is a recommendation for historical significance: Robert Bakker's 1986 The Dinosaur Heresies is essential to understanding what modern paleontologists call the Dinosaur Renaissance, or how our perception of dinosaurs changed from lizardlike evolutionary dead-ends into the active, successful bird ancestors we see in reconstructions now. this book kickstarted that change, and it's easy to see how: it's a very engaging read, Bakker argues his points very effectively, plus there are cute dinosaur cartoons. (i also love a lot of older works for their personal significance, but gushing about formative dinosaur books is something for another post.)

finally, thanks to the wonders of the internet, books are not the only way to learn about current dinosaur science! the best way is always by reading paleontology papers, where scientists directly describe and illustrate new discoveries or hypotheses. however, i know jumping straight into the technical literature may be overwhelming: fortunately a lot of paleontologists have social media, blogs, and/or podcasts where they write about their work and new developments in the field. the heyday of science blogs is kind of past, but there are still a few very good ones out there: this list on Feedly has a good selection to browse. being just self-published material, all of these don't have the benefits of peer review that papers and books do, so always be willing to take things with a grain of salt and do your own research.

of course this is a non-exhaustive list, especially limiting myself to both works recently published and which i have actually read. i've certainly forgotten or missed out on many new paleontology books (Dean Lomax's Locked in Time is one of these which i still haven't gotten ahold of yet, but which im very excited to get to); i welcome any additional recommendations or thoughts from the rest of paleoblr!

i hope this was helpful and i wish you luck in your reading :)

[xandramaywing]

Dinosaur, this only took a few extra minutes due to me changing class periods and doing work on the side. I'm probably gonna make a bookmark out of it

[tmkeesey]

The front cover for my upcoming comic book, Paleocene #4. Check out the campaign to get it printed!

Sixty-six million years ago, the world ended.

A meteorite over ten kilometers in diameter slammed into the Earth. The explosion released two million times as much energy as the largest nuclear bomb ever detonated. All life in the vicinity was instantly obliterated.

For the rest of the world, death was slower. A shroud of soot and dust engulfed the Earth. Without sunlight, plants withered and died, setting off a domino effect up the food chain, all the way to mighty predators like Tyrannosaurus rex. Three quarters of all life on Earth perished, starving in the darkness.

But we survived.

Not “we” as in humankind. This was much earlier. But our early primate ancestors—they persisted. With clutched hands and shining eyes, they witnessed the end of the world … and the early dawn of a new one.

What's in the new issue?

After witnessing a predatory bird devour their fellow troop member, Mamma and Brother continue their search for Sister … now in the freezing cold of winter.

Could the little child possibly have survived? What will happen to Auntie and the rest of the troop in their absence? And, as Brother grows up, will he stay with his Mamma?

If you've been following the story so far, you'll definitely want to read this one, because, I promise, you will finally discover Sister's fate!