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Darren Naish
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Great Dinosaur Discoveries Hardcover – September 8, 2009

by Darren Naish (Author)
4.8 4.8 out of 5 stars 29 ratings
Books on dinosaurs have generally arranged them in terms of their classification or according to when they lived. This major new book looks at dinosaurs from a historical perspective, from the earliest scrappy finds and best guesses of the early 1800s to the spectacular key discoveries that changed people's minds and brought dinosaurs alive in the public consciousness. Key finds for each century are examined in chronological order, with information about the dinosaurs themselves interwoven with accounts of their actual discovery and the extraordinary scientists and explorers who found them. On this fascinating journey, we come back to the same sorts of dinosaurs more than once as new discoveries changed ideas on their appearance, biology or behaviour. The amazing new dicoveries in China and South America in the last few years are fully documented, as are the major new finds of the 21st century.
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  1. Print length
    192 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Publisher
    A & C Black Publishers Ltd
  4. Publication date
    September 8, 2009
  5. Dimensions
    8.94 x 0.87 x 11.22 inches
  6. ISBN-10
    1408119064
  7. ISBN-13
    978-1408119068
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Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ A & C Black Publishers Ltd; 1st edition (September 8, 2009)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 192 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1408119064
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1408119068
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 2.62 pounds
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 8.94 x 0.87 x 11.22 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.8 4.8 out of 5 stars 29 ratings

About the author

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Darren Naish

Darren Naish

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Darren Naish is an author, researcher and qualified scientist, based in England, UK, who writes about animals living and extinct. His special interests include dinosaurs, ancient marine reptiles, the flying pterosaurs, mystery animals, conservation biology and the portrayal of ancient animals in art. Dr Naish has published several books on all of these things: several more are in preparation.

Customer reviews

4.8 out of 5 stars
29 global ratings

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Customers say

Customers find the book visually appealing with its attractive artwork, graphics, and layouts. They find it an enjoyable read and a great coffee table book for kids and adults who refuse to grow up.

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4 customers mention "Visual quality"4 positive0 negative

Customers appreciate the book's visual quality. They find the artwork and graphics beautiful, with fantastic photos and paleo art. The layouts are interesting and visually appealing.

"...Profile pages such as "Mole-armed Mononykus", which includes my favorite photo, the skull of Shuvuuia, demonstrating its half-finger length...." Read more

"...It has the visual quality of a coffee table book (but not the enormous size) and the contents of a scientific book written with the layperson..." Read more

"...many dinosaur discoveries from all points in modern history, sumptuously illustrated and well written." Read more

"Beautiful artwork and graphics. Just love dino stuff and was not disappointed." Read more

3 customers mention "Readability"3 positive0 negative

Customers find the book engaging and enjoyable. They describe it as a great coffee table book for kids and adults who refuse to grow up.

"This is a great coffee table book for kids and adults who refuse to grow up..." Read more

"...This is a fantastic read and a terrific buy for anyone who has more than the faintest interest in dinosaurs." Read more

"Very enjoyable. A chronological history of important discoveries and the people who made them...." Read more

Top reviews from the United States

  • chris mclaughlin
    5.0 out of 5 stars Dinerdsaurs!
    Reviewed in the United States on January 31, 2015
    Verified Purchase
    This is a great coffee table book for kids and adults who refuse to grow up (is it culturally acceptable to be obsessed with dinosaurs at any age yet? Its ought to be!) Fantastic photos and paleo art, a fun trip through the history and science of dinosaur discovery, including some great Discovery Profile pages such as "Mole-armed Mononykus", which includes my favorite photo, the skull of Shuvuuia, demonstrating its half-finger length. Never heard of names/terms like Mononykus, Parvicursor, or Shuvuuia? That's one of the great things about this book, it will introduce to you all sorts of great lesser, and unknown ancient beasts instead of just banging on about the usual suspects like T. rex (but don't worry, there is a Discovery Profile about this perennial favorite as well a bit about Chicago Field Museum's famous "Sue" ). The only thing that I wish it had was a pronunciation guide so as to limit the feelings of embarrassment and ignorance when attempting to say the names aloud. That's a bit nit-picky, perhaps, and it wouldn't have prevented me from buying it anyway.
    Bottom line, this is an all-around fun, intelligently written, beautifully designed book for dino-nerds of any age. Get it for your kids, get it for yourself, just get it and geek out.
    4 people found this helpful
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  • Andrew Everett
    5.0 out of 5 stars A beautiful, wonderful book, even for laypeople
    Reviewed in the United States on October 1, 2009
    Verified Purchase
    I have had a lifelong interest in extinct creatures, especially dinosaurs, and have followed Darren Naish's blog for several years. This book looked interesting, and I purchased it without realizing how utterly addicting this book is. It has the visual quality of a coffee table book (but not the enormous size) and the contents of a scientific book written with the layperson (that is to say, a non-biologist or paleontologist) in mind. It is a fascinating look at dinosaurs from a historical perspective, meaning that Dr. Naish begins with the first dinosaur discoveries and discusses what theories people had about the creatures they were discovering and describing.

    The layouts are interesting and visually attractive to the eye, and the content is conveniently partitioned for easy comprehension. Dr. Naish also goes out of his way to discuss misconceptions or little-known facts in order to help clarify what we currently believe about the topics covered.

    This is a fantastic read and a terrific buy for anyone who has more than the faintest interest in dinosaurs.
    29 people found this helpful
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  • Tim Morris
    5.0 out of 5 stars I can't fault this book, it covers many dinosaur ...
    Reviewed in the United States on August 18, 2015
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    I can't fault this book, it covers many dinosaur discoveries from all points in modern history, sumptuously illustrated and well written.
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  • Amazon Customer
    4.0 out of 5 stars Dr Naish you and Mark W. enthuse me with every addition...BondiiBeach
    Reviewed in the United States on December 10, 2016
    Verified Purchase
    Am I an editor now??? Gotta push the book I know...however, Im really pleased to be enthralled...yes, enthralled by Dr Naishs' book.. As a kid in the 50's I was lucky to have a Medical Practioner for a father who had many interests in Botany Geology Palaeontology and so much more...he bought me the Prehistoric Animals of Dr Augusta...illustrated by Zdenek Burian in1967..(not the earliest I know)..but was hooked and I still have it !!!..Since then....and we have no time now...Ive bought and followed the studies of Swinton,Colbert and so many others to Witton today..That said...I loved your history...(I have Hons. History..not Geology.....) and I therefore love to see the development of public awareness of our wonderful study...hopefully...Australia will be the new China of discovery..(of dinosauria anyway!!!!)..Cheers and all good things to you and your studies..robgooden1066@gmail.com
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  • J. Forsyth
    5.0 out of 5 stars Five Stars
    Reviewed in the United States on December 1, 2015
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    Beautiful artwork and graphics. Just love dino stuff and was not disappointed.
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  • Rob Hardy
    5.0 out of 5 stars A Gorgeous Dinosaur Book with a Difference
    Reviewed in the United States on March 12, 2010
    There are plenty of books about dinosaurs. Because the creatures fascinate so many people, and not just little boys, many of these books are aimed at the public, and feature pictures of the fantastic beasts in their many forms. _The Great Dinosaur Discoveries_ (University of California Press) by Darren Naish is a little like this, but pay attention to the title; there are dinosaurs aplenty here, and lots of color photographs and artists' reconstructions of the ancient animals, but the history of discovering and of understanding what the fossils had to tell us is the theme of this dinosaur book. It's a fine theme, and Naish, who has previously written a more conventional encyclopedia of dinosaurs, tells it from the first discovery of mysterious gigantic bones to the controversies that power dinosaur research today. The story is chronological, with each two-page spread devoted to a particular dinosaur, discovery, or concept. The chapters are tied with a timeline, but not the typical one that shows Precambrian, Cambrian, Jurassic, and other ancient eras (although there is one of those in the introduction). Rather, there is a timeline that starts with the naming of the first dinosaur in 1824, right through the ones named in the 21st century. It is a human story, complete with misunderstandings and competition that somehow got us to our current concepts of what dinosaurs were and why they were important.

    The earliest discoveries of fossils were where the naturalists already were, in England in the 1820s. The version of the dinosaurs from these original fossils makes them look like hippopotami with alligator teeth. It is not surprising that with just a few specimens, there would be many mistakes in the beginning. One of the themes here is that the range of exploration has become worldwide. It is not surprising that dinosaurs should be found all over the world; when dinosaurs first appeared (Late Triassic, about 200 million years ago), the land masses of the Earth were all together in one single supercontinent. From the discoveries made in the quarries and fields of England, researchers were eventually able to get to now famous dinosaur ranges in Montana and the Gobi Dessert, but also in Australia, Africa, and even India. In tracing the history of dinosaur research, Naish includes the "Great Dinosaur Rush" which started in the beginning of the 20th century and was characterized by paleontologists as popular heroes, driven to frontiers in order to bring spectacular finds to their museums. _Tyrannosaurus_, for instance, was a product of these expeditions. The pace and enthusiasm settled down in the middle of the century, only to pick up as the "Dinosaur Renaissance" of the 1960's. It was sparked by complete rethinking of the evolutionary and ecological roles that dinosaurs filled. One of the important figures (Naish includes short biographies of many dinosaur researchers) is John Ostrom, whose earliest work was about duckbilled hadrosaurs; it reclassified them from amphibians to terrestrial browsers. In 1964, Ostrom and colleagues discovered _Deinonychus_ in Montana, a close relative of the famous _Velociraptor_ from Jurassic Park. Ostrom regarded its skeletal anatomy, and inferred that it was, in his words, "a highly predaceous, extremely agile and very active animal" whose metabolism and activity would have been higher than we would associate with reptiles. He noted similarities to the famous feathered dinosaur _Archaeopteryx_, and renewed the idea that birds had evolved from dinosaurs, an idea first proposed by "Darwin's Bulldog," Thomas Henry Huxley, in the nineteenth century. Ostrom's student, Robert Bakker, argued that dinosaurs were not just active, but warm-blooded, and that instead of thinking of them as evolutionary dead-ends, they should be regarded as successes because they brought forth the astonishingly successful birds. Ostrom's ideas have been reinforced by even more recent _Deinonychus_ finds that show it was feathered and more like a bird than even he had suspected.

    Bringing the history up to the present, Naish includes the latest news about dinosaurs with not just feathers, but fur, the famous tyrannosaur named Sue, and the weird spiky head of _Dracorex hogwartsia_, the first of whose names means "dragon king," while the second comes from Hogwarts Academy, where Harry Potter trained. This grand book is filled on every page with color photographs and artists' impressions of extraordinary beasts. The paintings follow the current trend of imagining dinosaurs in purple, green, red, and blue, with stripes or patches; given the closeness of dinosaurs to birds, I suppose it isn't much of a stretch to give them some of the vivid colors their descendants have. It will be interesting to see how a book on the same subject twenty years from now might look. After all, Naish frequently points out faulty paleontological conceptions and how scientists came to correct them; many of our current concepts will need modification, of course. He says that we are experiencing a dinosaur boom: "The number of recognized dinosaurs has undergone an extraordinary 85 percent increase since 1990." Here is a gorgeous demonstration of a couple of centuries of admirable scientific effort.
    16 people found this helpful
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Top reviews from other countries

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  • Rochelle Peach
    5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent value for hard to find book.
    Reviewed in the United Kingdom on August 26, 2023
    Verified Purchase
    Fast delivery, excellent content.
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  • Cliente Amazon
    4.0 out of 5 stars Great Dinosaur Discoveries
    Reviewed in Italy on January 3, 2016
    Verified Purchase
    La consegna del libro è arrivata puntuale come è stato indicato durante l'acquisto.
    Il libro è utile e interessante alla ricerca sul tema dei dinosauri.
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  • Cliente Amazon
    5.0 out of 5 stars traduccion al español
    Reviewed in Spain on January 5, 2014
    Verified Purchase
    Me gustaria que este libro The great dinosaur
    discoveries y otros de paleontologia que están
    escritos en ingles lo traduzcan al español
    para ser mas facil su lectura.
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  • John A Bedggood
    5.0 out of 5 stars Even I think it's a great readable book
    Reviewed in the United Kingdom on April 27, 2015
    Verified Purchase
    Much appreciated by a friend as a present. Even I think it's a great readable book !
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  • Susan
    5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent book
    Reviewed in the United Kingdom on February 8, 2013
    Verified Purchase
    I bought it as a present for someone and they seem to be always picking it up to read it, so it must be good!
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