by Frank DeCourten
Review from Scientific American:
Of books on dinosaurs there are many, but this one aims at a wider target. DeCourten says he “became increasingly disenchanted with dinosaur publications that focused almost exclusively on the animals themselves, with little mention of the habitats and environmental history of the areas they occupied.” So he focused on Utah, which is a rich source of dinosaur remains, and has produced a work that examines dinosaurs in the geologic and historical setting there—historical in this case meaning the Mesozoic era in which they flourished for millions of years and then, quite abruptly as geologic time goes, met their mysterious end. The book is carefully constructed and is immensely aided by its abundant illustrations—22 color plates by Carel Brest van Kempen (showing dinosaurs as they might have looked in life), 41 photographs and 112 figures—drawings and charts, mostly done by DeCourten. The concluding chapter, “Doing Paleontology,” gives a sense of the hard work required to find dinosaur remains: “Because there is still no way to locate dinosaur fossils from satellites or airplanes, and no remote sensing techniques can reveal the presence of fossil bones over a broad area, the actual finding of scientific treasures requires walking ... and walking ... and walking.”