Dinosaurs: The Most Complete, Up-to-Date Encyclopedia for Dinosaur Lovers of All Ages

Over the last few months, I bought and read several books about dinosaurs. This book, Thomas Holtz and Luis Rey's Dinosaurs: The Most Complete, Up-to-Date Encyclopedia, was my best purchase by far. It is wonderfully written, wonderfully organized, and the illustrations are lovely. Not only does Holtz have a gift for introducing and describing the standard features of dinosaur paleontology in clear and accessible prose, he does a fabulous job of explaining the REASONS why paleontologists have arrived at their conclusions. In other words, in addition to learning about dinosaurs, a novice reader will likely walk away with a greater understanding of how one performs sound scientific reasoning.Many reviewers have pointed out that the isn't exactly pitched to younger children. That's probably correct. But of course, books are never "one size fits all." As a middle-aged adult wanting to learn about dinosaurs for the first time, this book was ideal for me. But I'm confident that a bright and motivated 10-year old will find the text equally enriching.For readers who might struggle with this sort of comprehensive and detailed treatment of dinosaurs -- for very young readers in particular -- I recommend Lessem and Tempesta's National Geographic Kids Ultimate Dinopedia: The Most Complete Dinosaur Reference Ever. It's a more straightforward encyclopedia, primarily made up of two-page entries on various dinosaur genera: usually a very nice illustration on the left page, and on the right page, a short and manageable text highlighting some interesting factoids about the genus in question. There are some weird errors in the Lessem and Tempesta text -- for example, they mislabel the parts of the dinosaur hip -- and the factoids sometimes seem a bit randomly selected. But it's a nevertheless a good text for particularly young readers who need less text and more pictures.I also compared Holtz's book with Paul Barrett and Raul Martin's National Geographic Dinosaurs, David Burnie's The Kingfisher Illustrated Dinosaur Encyclopedia, and Gregory Paul's The Princeton Field Guide to Dinosaurs (Princeton Field Guides). These books are quite fine in their own way, but I felt they all fell short when compared to Holtz's Dinosaurs.The Barrett and Martin book contained a lot less information, in every respect really, than Holtz. My main reason for purchasing Barrett's book was the illustrations by Raul Martin. They are just gorgeous; more pleasing than Luis Rey's illustrations for the Holtz book, in my own view, despite the fact that Martin's Troodons and Velociraptors were, alas, completely unfeathered. Similarly, I learned that Gregory Paul, the author of the Princeton Field Guide, is one of the most influential paleoartists of the last 30 or so years and I very much love the extensive illustrations of dinosaur skeletons he included in his book. However, Paul uses a system for classifying dinosaurs and groups of dinosaurs that is, at least in places, not widely accepted. This fact alone diminished the value of the book for me. But putting that issue aside, it was also not as well organized and as informative (to a novice) as I found the Holtz book to be.Finally, Burnie's Kingfisher book was probably the most comparable to Holtz in terms of both the amount of content and the type of content. Still, I regularly found Holtz easier to follow, more informative about basic information, and more informative about how paleontologists have arrived at their conclusions (or why they disagree). The Holtz book has the added advantage of being more up-to-date.In sum, Holtz's book is the best I've seen. It's comprehensive. It is organized extremely well. (In fact, it's not really an encyclopedia in the strict sense. But despite this, it's not necessary to read the text cover to cover; the chapter topics make it is easy for the reader to jump around.) It's up-to-date, with discussions of cladistics and the thesis that dinosaurs are not extinct (birds are dinosaurs). And the artwork by Rey, while not my absolute favorite, is still excellent in most places.This is the dinosaur book I'd keep if I had to throw away all but one.

I really love this book!!!! Its content its great and very complete. It covers every aspect about dinosaurs that one could possibly imagine. It has itformation about fosilisation, about how dinosaurs are mounted on museums, about the origins of dinosaurs, about every group of dinosaurs, about life in the Triassic, Jurassic and Cretacious, there extintion and many more aspects. As the name says is very complete. I really like the way that they presented every known group of mesozoic dinosaurs instead of presinting just some dinosaurs generes and giving information about each one, because by presenting the larger familly one can get a better and more extensive information about how the members of that group where, acted and how related where them to other dinosaurs groups. But if that was not enough there are also individual chapters about what is known about dinosaur behavior, biology and reproduction. However, in each chapter you are going to find a few specif dinosaur meassuramentes, but that its also covered in the book; since at the back there is a list of every dinosaur genera discovered at the time that the book was written and every genera has its size, weight, where its fossils where discovered and a specific fact. Other great aspect of this book is its art, the pictures by Luis Rey are really beautiful and original. And also the way it was written by Thom Holtz is outstanding, allways giving a very good and easy to understand explanations using familiar words and it never gets boring. The author of this book Dr. Thomas Holtz is one of the most famous paleontology experts in the world, but also this book has many articles written by many other top paleontologists. But since this book was published in 2007 there is some out of date information; however the book itself even gives a link where one can get the updated info. So, in conclusion this book is a must have for any or prehistoric life or dinosaur fan; its great for adults since its full of content and its great for kids also since its very easy to understand.

Fantastic read, and surprisingly unbiased, most facts are presented well and much speculation is left to the reader. There are many articles included written by many other paleontologist. I enjoyed the art, beautiful renditions of these beasts in their natural habitat doing all sorts of things from nurturing, feeding to fighting...though some of the artist renditions of these dinosaurs may have elaborated too much on what they looked like. This book is pretty scientific and even though it is written with kids in mind, if you are a beginner you will be flipping through the pages all the time to reference what you are reading, it's a little like a college text book rather than an encyclopedia. I actually used Dougal Dixon's dinosaur encyclopedia as a reference while reading this book. This book really describes how each dinosaur family evolved and came to be rather than being a list of dinosaurs and facts. I read the book complete but I will need to read it again to really soak up all the information, it surprisingly is a quick read. Also, this book is specific about what a dinosaur is. People less familiar with this time period will usually consider most prehistoric creatures types of dinosaurs but the scientific definition of a dinosaur covers a more specific grouping of animals. Although most typically marine and flying reptiles are referred to as dinosaurs, in fact they evolved off the tree separate from dinosaurs and technically they are not dinosaurs, you will not find them in this book in much detail, no pterodactyl, no plesiosaurs. If you have an interest in dinosaurs this is a must have, must read book!!!!! It is a defining title for the entire paleontology community!!!