Mark P. Witton

An illustrated guide to everyone's favorite flying saurians. The book consists of a number of introductory general chapters about the Pterosauria and "pterosaurology" as a whole, followed by a roughly chronological survey of some sixteen "family-level" groups - starting with the Triassic Dimorphodontidae and ending with latest Cretaceous azhdarchids - and rounded off with a brief chapter on why the pterosaurs went extinct. The last doesn't really offer a definite conclusion: Witton mostly show more stresses that when the end-Cretaceous extinction came around, there were seemingly only azhdarchids and perhaps nyctosaurids left to wipe out: the real question is probably why pterosaur diversity had slowly declined throughout the Late Cretaceous.

The text is accompanied by lavish illustrations, both photographs and life reconstructions by Witton himself - he's a talented artist as well as a palaeontologist.

The only criticism I'd make is stylistic; Witton's mixture of scientific jargon and breezy conversationality is sometimes jarring (though one suspects this is what most scientists sound like on lunch break). If you've been looking for a pterosaur book, get this one. If you haven't, get it anyway if you've ever been enthused by prehistoric animals. show less

Beautiful illustrations, which is why I bought the book, but the short essay that describes each one is surprisingly informative and up to date. The brief section at the beginning about the original version of the book was also very informative, as were the notes on the illustrations that followed the plates. The pictures are still the star of the book, and for this reason I would strongly recommend buying the actual book, and not the Kindle version.

What is most fascinating to me is that the more we know about these creatures the more bizarre they seem to be. At the very least you'll come away from this study no longer viewing them as being bird analogues; the pterosaurs were very much their own thing and the author does a good job of laying out the evidence of why this was the case.

The name is probably a better description than any review. It's a book. About Pterosaurs. It's really good.