Megalosaurus

Book review – Paleontology: An Illustrated History

6-minute read

It is no mean feat to try and tell the history of a discipline as enormous as palaeontology through images in a mere 256 pages. Yet this is exactly the challenge that David Bainbridge has taken on with this book. He has curated a striking selection of vintage and modern palaeoart, archival photos of fossils and their discoverers, and scientific diagrams through the ages. The resulting Paleontology: An Illustrated History manages to combine the old and the new with the familiar and the unfamiliar into one neatly crafted package that makes for a very nice gift.

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Book review – Dinopedia: A Brief Compendium of Dinosaur Lore

6-minute read

In 2019, Princeton University Press published Fungipedia, being a brief compendium of mushroom lore. The format was clearly successful, because in 2021 they expanded the concept into a small series, adding books about flowers, birds, trees, and now dinosaurs. A further two on geology and insects are in the making. Each of these is illustrated, pocket-sized A–Z miscellanies with a hardback, cloth cover that is very giftable. In Dinopedia, palaeontologist Darren Naish has written 75 entries on dinosaurs and relevant people and places, and added a selection of his illustrations. Is October too early to start talking about stocking fillers?

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Book review – The Story of the Dinosaurs in 25 Discoveries: Amazing Fossils and the People Who Found Them

6-minute read

What is better than a good dinosaur story? How about 25 of them? Geologist and palaeontologist Donald R. Prothero returns to Columbia University Press for the third book in this format. Having covered fossils and rocks, he now serves up 25 fascinating vignettes of famous dinosaurs and the people who discovered them.

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