The ideal textbook for non-science majors, this lively and engaging introduction encourages students to ask questions, assess data critically and think like a scientist. Building on the success of the previous editions, Dinosaurs has been reorganised and extensively rewritten in response to instructor and student feedback. It continues to make science accessible and relevant through its clear explanations and extensive illustrations. Updated to reflect recent fossil discoveries and to include new taxa, the text guides students through the dinosaur groups, emphasising scientific concepts rather than presenting endless facts. It is grounded in the common language of modern evolutionary biology - phylogenetic systematics - so that students examine dinosaurs as professional paleontologists do. The key emerging theme of feathered dinosaurs, and the many implications of feathers, have been integrated throughout the book, highlighted by the inclusion of stunning new photographs in this beautifully illustrated text, now in full colour throughout.
Author(s): David E. Fastovsky
Edition: 3
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Year: 2016
Language: English
Pages: 432
Tags: Dinosaurs; Paleontology; Biology; Phylogeny
Cover
Half-title
Frontispiece
Title page
Copyright information
Table of contents
Preface to the third edition
Dedication
Part I Remembrance of things past
Dinosaur tales
The word ‘‘dinosaur’’ in this book
Science
Science = testing hypotheses
The ‘‘proof’’ is in. . . the test!
Science in the popular media
1 To catch a dinosaur
Preservation and fossils
Making body fossils
Before burial
Burial
After burial
Trace and other kinds of fossils
Trace fossils
Other fossils
Finding fossils
Collecting
Planning
Running an expedition
Science
Right rocks
Right time
Living on land
Prospecting
Collecting
Back at the ranch
Summary
Selected readings
Topic questions
2 Dinosaur days
When did dinosaurs live (and how do we know)?
Geochronology
Geochronology: the ages of the ages
Choosing the right isotope
Lithostratigraphy
Sedimentation and sedimentary rocks
Relative dating
Biostratigraphy
Eras and Periods and Epochs, oh my!
Continents and climates
Late Triassic
Early and Middle Jurassic
Late Jurassic
Early Cretaceous
Late Cretaceous
Climates during the time of the dinosaurs?
Heat retention in continents and oceans
Climates through the Mesozoic
Summary
Selected readings
Topic questions
Appendix 2.1 Chemistry quick ‘n dirty
Appendix 2.2 Plate tectonics
3 Who’s related to whom - and how do we know?
Who are you?
Evolution
Relationship and the classification
Determining relationships
Homology
Chopping down the ‘‘tree of life’’
Phylogenetic systematics - the reconstruction of phylogeny
Hierarchy
Characters
Cladograms
Cladograms as tools in understanding the evolution of organisms
Mapping the course of evolution with the cladogram
How to read evolution in the cladogram
Parsimony
Cladograms are science
Leaving Linnaeus: introducing an evolutionary classification - by definition
Summary
Selected readings
Topic questions
Appendix 3.1 What is ‘‘evolution’’?
4 Who are the dinosaurs?
Finding the history of life
In the beginning
Chordata
Vertebrata
Tetrapoda
The tetrapod skeleton made easy
Vertebral column
Girdles
Chest
Legs and arms
Head
Within Tetrapoda
Amniota
Anapsids and Synapsida
Diapsida
Archosauromorpha
Dinosaurs
Standing tall
Summary
Selected readings
Topic questions
5 Dinosaurs
In the beginning. . .
Archosauria
Crurotarsi vs. Ornithodira
Dinosauromorpha
Dinosauria
Early Dinosauria
Ornithischia and Saurischia
Is Saurischia more primitive than Ornithischia?
The evolution of Dinosauria
Let the games begin!
What a difference a Stage makes
Feathers
Who invented feathers?
Feathers without flight
Insulation
Stylin’
Senses
Embryology
Summary
Selected readings
Topic questions
Part II Saurischia: meat, might, and magnitude
What makes a saurischian a saurischian?
Selected readings
6 Theropoda I
Theropoda
Eating meat the theropod way
Who are theropods?
Theropod lives and lifestyles
Running for life
Theropods were surely cursorial animals!
Paws and claws
Teeth and jaws
Toothless
Senses
Making sense of tyrannosaurs
Balance
Thoughts of a theropod
The skinny on skin
Eaters and eatees
Cannibals
Who ate whom?
Social behavior: sex and the single rex
Sexual dimorphism and its role in sexual selection
The wonderful world of color
Mama’s (?) little theropod
Summary
Selected readings
Topic questions
7 Theropoda II: Meet the theropods
The outline of theropod relationships
Major events in theropod evolution
Neotheropoda
Tetanurae
Avetheropoda
Carnosauria and Coelurosauria
Convergent evolution in large theropods
Coelurosauria
Tyrannosauroidea
Compsognathidae and Ornithomimosauria
Maniraptora
Paraves
Summary
Selected readings
Topic questions
8 Theropoda III
Introduction
Meet Archaeopteryx
Speed bumps
Lessons from history
Stuff n’ feathers!
So what is a bird?
Origin of avian flight
Towards a model for the origin of flight in birds
Mesozoic birds
The Mesozoic avialary
Evolution of Aves
Getting to be a modern bird
Aves
Summary
Selected readings
Topic questions
Appendix 8.1 What makes a modern bird a modern bird?
Feathers
Loss of teeth
Large brains
Carpometacarpus
Legs and feet
Pygostyle
Pneumatic bones
Rigid skeleton
Flight musculature
9 Sauropodomorpha: The big, the bizarre, and the majestic
Sauropodomorpha
Living large
Who are sauropodomorphs?
Sauropodomorphs: among the very first dinosaurs
‘‘Prosauropods’’
‘‘Prosauropod’’ lives and lifestyles
Feeding
Need for speed?
Socializing
Eggs, nests, and babies
Sauropoda
Design
Thoughts of a sauropod
Lifestyles of the huge and ancient
A place to roam
Beating hearts and necking
Feeding
Locomotion
Hanging with the big dogs
Defense
Growth and development
The evolution of Sauropodomorpha
Sauropoda
Summary
Selected readings
Topic questions
Part III Ornithischia: armored, horned, and duck-billed dinosaurs
What makes an ornithischian an ornithischian?
Chew chew chew-boogie!
Chewing in mammals
Chewing in dinosaurs
Ornithischia: the big picture
Heterodontosauridae and Lesothosaurus: the most primitive ornithischians
The rest of Ornithischia
Selected readings
10 Thyreophorans: The armor-bearers
Thyreophora
Who are thyreophorans?
Primitive Thyreophora
Eurypoda: Stegosauria
Stegosaurian lives and lifestyles
Locomotion
Dealin’ with mealin’
No brains, one brain, or two brains?
Social lives of the enigmatic
Spines and plates
Hot plates?
Eurypoda: Ankylosauria - mass and gas
Nodosauridae
Ankylosauridae
Ankylosaur lives and lifestyles
Mouths to feed
Brains and senses
Defense
The evolution of Thyreophora
Thyreophora
Eurypoda
Stegosauria
Ankylosauria
Ankylosauridae
Nodosauridae
Summary
Selected readings
Topic questions
11 Marginocephalia
Marginocephalia
Who were marginocephalians?
Marginocephalia: Pachycephalosauria - in domes we trust
Pachycephalosaur lives and lifestyles
Where did a pachycephalosaur call home?
Feeding
Pachycephalosaur brains
Using your head . . . for a battering ram?
Building a better head-butter
Conscientious objectors?
Socializing pachycephalosaur style
Sexual selection
The evolution of Pachycephalosauria
Marginocephalia: Ceratopsia - horns and all the frills
Ceratopsian lives and lifestyles
Dressed and ready to chew
Beyond the mouth
Locomotion
Bringing up baby
Horns, frills, and ceratopsian behavior
Thoughts of a ceratopsian
The evolution of Ceratopsia
The evolution of behavior
Reality check
Summary
Selected readings
Topic questions
12 Ornithopoda: Mighty Mesozoic masticators
Ornithopoda
Who were the ornithopods?
Ornithopod lives and lifestyles
Gettin’ around
Arms and hands
Dietary fiber
Thoughts of an ornithopod
Socializing à la Ornithopoda
Song of the saurian
Other ornithopods
Bringing up baby II
The evolution of Ornithopoda
Summary
Selected readings
Topic questions
Part IV Endothermy, endemism, and extinction
13 Dinosaur thermoregulation: some like it hot
The way they were
Physiology: temperature talk
What about dinosaurs?
Seminal studies - early evidence for dinosaur endothermy that fueled the dinosaur renaissance
Legs and lungs
Of predators and their prey
Hearts and minds
The nose shows
Where the wild things are
Haversian bone
Newer approaches
LAGs
LAGs as time markers
Growth
Stable isotopes
Core-to-extremities
Direct temperature measurements
Latitudinal gradients
Clumped isotopes
Different strokes for different folks?
Summary
Selected readings
Topic questions
14 The flowering of the Mesozoic
Dinosaurs in the Mesozoic Era
Preservation
Dinosaurs through time
In the beginning. . . the Late Triassic (237-201.3 Ma)
The rise of dinosaurs - an ecological perspective
Out-competition - wedge with edge
Wedge without edge?
Contintental distributions and the Late Triassic fauna
Jurassic (201.3-145 Ma)
Cretaceous (145-66.1 Ma)
Endemism
Across the Bering Straits?
After the ball is over
Plants and dinosaurian herbivores
Plants
Dinosaurs and plants
Plants
Co-evolution
Summary
Selected readings
Topic questions
15 A history of paleontology through ideas
The idea of ideas
In the beginning
Seventeenth and eighteenth centuries
The nineteenth century through the mid-twentieth century
Dinosaurs in the Victorian Age
Dinosaurs divided
Dinosaurs in the first half of the twentieth century
The second part of the twentieth century to today
Revolutions in dinosaur paleobiology
Endothermy
Phylogenetic systematics enters the fray
Thecodontia
Dinosaur origins
Ornithischian and saurischian relationships
Birds as dinosaurs
The extinction of (non-avian) Dinosauria
Today
Summary
Selected readings
Topic questions
16 The Cretaceous-Tertiary extinction: The frill is gone
How important were the deaths of a few dinosaurs?
Asteroid impact!
The ‘‘smoking gun’’
Volcanic eruptions
Biological record of the latest Cretaceous
Oceans
Continental seas and shelves
Marine microorganisms
The ‘‘Strangelove’’ ocean
Terrestrial record
Plants
Vertebrates
Mammals
Dinosaurs
Extinction hypotheses
Testability and parsimony
Extinction hypotheses
Does the idea that an asteroid impact caused the K-Pg extinctions have predictable consequences?
Recovery
Does the asteroid impact hypothesis explain all the data?
Other hypotheses
Multiple causes
So what happened at the K-Pg boundary?
Summary
Selected readings
Topic questions
Glossary
Figure credit
Index of subjects
Index of genera
