Weird Dinosaurs: The Strange New Fossils Challenging Everything We Thought We Knew

I've been meaning to read this book for awhile, and that might be the one problem here, as, having been published in the middle of the last decade, I have the sense that this work is just on the edge of becoming dated. Take the image of "Spinosaurus" on the cover, which being a large aquatic predator is certainly a poster child for what constitutes "weird" in regards to dinosaurs, However, there is a brisk argument going on since the mid-2010s over just how aquatic this animal really was; though Pickrell is certainly aware that it just takes one good fossil to wreck all your theories.

Be that as it may, Pickrell tries to pick his journalistic anecdotes with an eye to illustrating what are still mostly new trends, mostly relating the show more surprising environments dinosauria was managing to thrive in, and the recognition that such is the overlap between the characteristics of birds and many dinosaurs that they're essentially part of the same family of animals. Still worth reading. show less

This is the second of John Pickrell's books I have read, the first being [b:Flying Dinosaurs: How Fearsome Reptiles Became Birds|23093880|Flying Dinosaurs How Fearsome Reptiles Became Birds How Fearsome Reptiles Became Birds|John Pickrell|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1413131535s/23093880.jpg|41727402]. Weird Dinosaurs is very good and is a well put together overview of the many current digs and the odd and surprising dinosaurs that have been discovered.

Is it any surprise really? They were around for millions of years and, just like every other animal on earth, they evolved and adapted to and for the environments of their times. The distribution of fossil dinosaurs revealed in this book ranges from Siberia to Patagonia to show more Madagascar and the Antarctic. There is a new golden age of fossil finds and dinosaur research that is really expanding our knowledge.

Pickrell, as a science writer, crafts an interesting book for the layman reader or even for someone like myself, who has been reading about dinosaurs for 40 years. I just can't help myself, I have at least a shelf's worth of books just about dinosaurs ranging from college-level texts to popular science books by paleontologists like Jack Horner, Robert Bakker and more. Some childhood fascinations just don't go away. show less

I've been a fan of dinosaurs since I was in grade school. A lot has changed since then. This book is one more attempt to bring us up to date on the rapidly evolving (heh) field of Mesozoic paleontology. Unfortunately, I didn't find it quite as weird and wonderful as the title implies. I think the author might have tried to cram too much into too little space, with the result that it felt to me like a whirlwind tour of unfamiliar territory, which leaves one with the sense that the territory is still unfamiliar.

I will grant that I wasn't reading it at the best of times. Due to various personal factors, I may not have brought enough focus to the work. Or maybe the work intentionally assumed more detailed knowledge of the field than I show more currently have. Nevertheless, sometimes it felt like Pickrell was pelting me with Latin names without explaining the creatures to which they are attached.

Mind you, there are probably people out there who will get a lot out of this book, and some passages do present the promised weird and wonderful. So if you're into dinosaurs, you may well want to have a look. show less

Dinosaurs are just a fun topic by themselves and thanks to the Jurassic movies they’ve become even more popular so I was very grateful to have found this book written with a very fluid writing style as that made it easier to share information with my kids.

We all loved this book especially as I also used it as an educational tool to open new doors for them. Geography lessons were created by looking up the various locations mentioned through Google Earth and Google Images. Science lessons lent themselves easily because this book opened up new avenues as we were able to talk about various climates, weather patterns, landscape conditions, and animal information. History was done by learning about paleontologists, what they do, who were show more some of the more well known, and about cultures in the various places dino bones were found.

It would’ve been nice if more pictures of the dinosaurs had been included but I just used Google Images to supplement what wasn’t in the book. This book overall is so incredibly full of interesting information in a very easy form it just made it a lot of fun to read. I would recommend anyone with a passing interest in dinosaurs check this out. show less