The Tyrannosaur Chronicles

June 1, 2016

Hone (zoology, Queen Mary Univ., London; Lost Worlds Revisited blog, the Guardian) resurrects tyrant dinosaurs, describing them as warm-blooded, unimaginably large yet fleet-footed, and possibly feathered. In smooth, serviceable prose, the author recounts how scientists visualize soft tissue from bone attachments and casts, find taxonomic relationships with algorithms, and deduce information about dinosaurs' ecology from bite marks, stomach contents, and comparisons with living species. This work features a snout-to-tail tour of tyrannosaur anatomy with minimal jargon. Most important, the author admits when evidence is missing or science lacks clear answers. Alas, Hone muddles tyrannosaur locations. His Mesozoic maps lack detail, and he dispenses with ancient continent names and fails to make clear whether a fossil's location is in the present or past. Because most of Mexico, sections of North Africa, and all of Florida were underwater during part of the Cretaceous period, readers may be confused. However, there are no other current books on tyrannosaurs for the nonscientist--though The Princeton Field Guide to Dinosaurs and The Complete Dinosaur cover dinosaur biology with readable prose and clear illustrations--making this a strong selection, despite some flaws. VERDICT Readers must look elsewhere for maps, but this volume is the go-to for tyrant dinosaurs.--Eileen H. Kramer, Georgia Perimeter Coll. Lib., Clarkston

Copyright 2016 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

July 1, 2016
Paleontology's poster child, Tyrannosaurus rex was the largest-ever terrestrial carnivore and the climax of a group of animals that evolved and diversified for 95 million years. Hone's book is an in-depth portrait that treats the entire group in four sections focused on, respectively, the definition, morphology, ecology, and future study of these king theropods (i.e., wild-foots carnivorous dinosaurs). Since the thorny vocabulary of taxonomics is rife in the first section, many may find it the hardest to read. But they should stay with Hone (and refer regularly to such illustrations as the chronological table of tyrannosauroid clades and the parsed T. rex skull and skeleton), for the subsequent sections are full of interest. Hone illuminates what kind of carnivores (scavengers or predators) tyrannosaurs were, how they grew (fast), what prey they favored, their competitors, their habitats, their family and social lives, describing them on the basis of what the fossil record seems to disclose and a large apparatus of reasonable analogizing and extrapolation posits. He happily asserts his continuing fascination with tyrannosaurs and mightily piques ours.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2016, American Library Association.)

May 2, 2016
Hone, a lecturer in ecology at Queen Mary University of London, lets his dinosaur-obsessed inner child run wild in this well-organized, up-to-date fact book about Tyrannosaurus rex and its 25 or so near relatives. He first offers necessary background, such as information about modern changes in naming and organizing conventions, as well as brief explanations of cladistics, morphology, and phylogenetics. Next he dives into the physical evidence, dividing the material into the kind of topics any children would recognize while giving the level of detail an adult reader requires. Hone runs through what bones and tracks tell researchers about how tyrannosauroid bodies looked, moved, grew, and functioned; how tyrannosaurs hunted their prey; and which other large carnivores existed alongside them in their Mesozoic environment. He uses current research but conservatively keeps his narrative clear by focusing on ideas that match established consensus. Similarly, illustrator Scott Hartman meticulously renders a traditional view of bones covered in skin rather than the scales and feathers described by some recent analyses. Hone provides a solid meal to feed the popular fascination with these tyrant lizards, easily digestible but made from ingredients that, at least in paleontological terms, are quite fresh. Illus.

May 15, 2016
Our fascination with Tyrannosaurus rex, the aptly named king of the dinosaurs, has been fed by Jurassic Park and other films, but the reality is equally entrancing.The story of the tyrannosaurs, writes Hone (Ecology/Queen Mary Univ. of London), "covers more than 100 million years of paleontological history, and over a century of scientific research." The author, an internationally recognized authority on dinosaurs whose own research has focused on tyrannosaurs, describes them as "icons of evolution and of the dinosaurs as a whole," and he believes that the focus of research on them has been encouraged by "its overexposure in the public eye (and in some scientific circles as well)." Hone chronicles the series of discoveries over the past 100 years since a dinosaur jaw and teeth were found in Britain. These bones have allowed scientists, including the author, to piece together the dinosaurs' history and aspects of their behavior. While correctly surmising that tyrannosaurs and other dinosaurs were carnivores, scientists erroneously assumed that they were some kind of previously unknown "giant land reptile." Subsequent fossil discoveries in polar regions ruled out this possibility since coldblooded reptiles could not survive such extreme cold weather. For 100 million years, these "largest terrestrial carnivores of all time, with giant heads and huge teeth," dominated the Earth. Teeth and other fossil evidence point to the likelihood that they were carnivorous hunters rather than scavengers, as does the placement of their eye sockets, which indicates binocular vision. The fossil record reveals "a massive change in the make-up of life on earth," likely due to a disastrous climate change that occurred some 66 million years ago--a series of events that precipitated a relatively short (in geological terms) extinction event "lasting perhaps just a few tens of thousands of years." Hone successfully integrates two equally fascinating stories: how our knowledge of these fabulous creatures was pieced together over time and what we can infer about them.

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