The Dinosaurs: New Visions of a Lost World: New Visions of a Lost World

The world’s leading paleontologist takes us on a visual tour of the latest dinosaur science, illustrated with accurate and stunning paleoart. Dinosaurs are not what you thought they were—or at least, they didn’t look like you thought they did. Here, world-leading paleontologist Michael J. Benton brings us a new visual guide to the world of the dinosaurs, showing how rapid advances in technology and amazing new fossil finds have changed the way we see these extinct beasts forever. Stunning, brand-new illustrations by paleoartist Bob Nicholls display the latest and most exciting scientific discoveries in vibrant color. From Sinosauropteryx, the first dinosaur to have its color patterns identified—a ginger-and-white striped tail and a “bandit mask”—by Benton’s team at the University of Bristol to recent research on the surprising mixed feathers and scales of Kulindadromeus, this is one of the first books to include cutting-edge scientific research in paleontology. Each chapter focuses on a particular extinct species, featuring a specially commissioned illustration by Bob Nicholls that brings to life the latest scientific breakthroughs, with accompanying text exploring how paleontologists have determined new details, such as the patterns on skin and the colors of feathers of animals that lived millions of years ago. This visual compendium surprises and challenges everything you thought you knew about what dinosaurs looked like and how they lived. Over the past twenty years, the study of dinosaurs has changed from natural history to a true scientific discipline. New technologies have revealed secrets locked in the prehistoric bones in ways that nobody predicted - we can now work out the colour of dinosaurs, their bite forces, top speeds, and even how they cared for their young. Remarkable new fossil finds, such as giant sauropod dinosaur skeletons from Patagonia, dinosaurs with feathers from China, and even a tiny dinosaur tail in Burmese amber - complete down to every detail of its filament-like feathers, skin, bones, and mummified tail muscles - have caused media sensations. New fossils are the lifeblood of modern palaeobiology of course, but it is the advances in technologies and methods that have allowed the revolution in the scope and confidence of the field. Dinosaurs Rediscovered gathers together all the latest palaeontological evidence and takes us behind the scenes on the expeditions and in museum laboratories, tracing the transformation of dinosaur study from its roots in antiquated natural history to a highly technical, computational, and indisputably scientific field today. Benton explores what we know of the world of the dinosaurs, how dinosaur remains are found and excavated, and especially how palaeontologists read the details of the life of the dinosaurs from the fossils - their colours, their growth, feeding and locomotion, how they grew from egg to adult, how they sensed the world, and even whether we will ever be able to bring them back to life. Dinosaurs are still very much a part of our world.