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Title: Feathered Dinosaurs: The Origin of Birds
ISBN: 0195372662
Author:
John Long
Publicate Date: 2008-09-01
Publish: 2008-09-01
List Price: $39.95
Average Customer Rating: 4.5
Format: Hardcover
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Amazon Lowest New Price: $23.70
Amazon Lowest Used Price: $23.71
Amazon Merchant Price: $26.37
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| Customer Review: |
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1: Fantastic Art but Bad Page Layout
First of all, this book is a must have for any dinosaur lover, and in particular those who are interested in the idea that many species of theropod dinosaurs may have had feathers. Indeed, there is direct fossil evidence that at least a few species of theropods had feathers, and the idea that feathers were a common feature of theropods is becoming increasingly plausible. That said, there is also direct fossil evidence for scales among some theropods, such as Carnotaurus. The question then becomes, which theropods had feathers and which didn't and exactly what did these feathers look like in life? How birdlike did these animals appear? Did some of them possess some combination of scales and feathers and, if so, what did that look like? It would probably take a time machine to definitively answer such questions, but a tentative answer can be had just by looking at Peter Schouten's beautiful illustrations in this book.
While the text is informative, the artwork is definitely the highlight of the book. Unfortunately the book suffers from one unforgivable flaw--bad page layout. Specifically, the paintings are presented as two-page spreads, resulting in a crease through the middle of the picture that, in many cases goes, right through the focus of the viewer's attention. This was a very poor design decision on the part of the publisher. The book is published by an academic press, so perhaps they don't understand how to make an art book. It should have been done in a different format, perhaps as an oversize book, in order to avoid putting that terribly distracting deep crease through the picture. That said, the paintings are better (in my opinion) than those of paleoartist Luis V. Rey, who has also taken to painting feathered dinosaurs. See Dinosaurs: The Most Complete, Up-to-Date Encyclopedia for Dinosaur Lovers of All Ages. In particular, Rey's dinosaurs are just too colorful and overly imaginative. Schouten's feathered dinosaurs, on the other hand, look much more plausible and not so over-the-top.
If you like Schouten's art in this book, I also recommend you take a look at A Gap in Nature: Discovering the World's Extinct Animals and Astonishing Animals: Extraordinary Creatures and the Fantastic Worlds They Inhabit, which cover recently extinct and modern animals.
In summary, if you love dinosaurs and want to know what they really looked like as living animals, buy this book. Just keep in mind that we still don't know what they really looked like, and as a result of a lifetime of conditioning (books, movies, etc.), I still tend to believe that the theropods were not as heavily feathered as portrayed here. I do hope that they re-release this book in a better format and page layout at some point, as the failure of the publishers to consider the visual impact of the crease in the center of the page has prevented me from giving this book a five star review.
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2: Not your father's dinosaurs.
Dinosaurs live! But not as animals isolated in some lost world or monsters cloned from ancient DNA but as the current result of millions of years of theropod evolution. The connection between predatory dinosaurs and birds has been obvious to science for some time but it is only in the last decade or so that we've been able to flawlessly see the transition in the fossil record. And now finally we're presented with a piece of work that illustrates that like no other. Feathered dinosaurs is a true artistic achievement unlike any other. The book is divided in two sections, one is actual reading material, nine short chapters worth. These brief chapters give short summaries on the various families of dinosaurs with whom birds are most closely related and are known to have possessed feathers in at least some members of the family. They go over the bulk of what we know about these animals, their evolutionary history, speculated behavior and latest findings. The second half is the real meat and potatoes, a series of paintings showing what these animals may have looked live in life. The paintings are organized based on what families can claim the closest connection to birds and from the most primitive forms to the most advanced. The paintings by and large are truly remarkable, they show dinosaurs like you've never seen them before and appear for the first time so much like their modern relatives that its almost difficult to see the differences. With that said the book is not without its flaws. Each painting takes up about a page and a half meaning the crease of the books cut right through them. For many of the paintings it is easy to ignore, on others we see the crease cut right down the face of the animal and while the bulk of the paintings are breathtaking some just aren't that good. One such image is that of the Velociraptor fighting protoceratops, a conflict I have been imagining since I first learned of the amazing fossil discovery that showed the two locked in combat. The image just looks wrong, not as detailed as many of the others and almost like it was done hastily. Then there is the text of the book, while the chapters and the profiles accompanying the pictures are great I find a lot of the information from the chapters carried on into the profiles, almost word for word. I find this disappointing. These flaws however are minuscule when measured against the book as a whole. I find myself looking through the book almost daily ever since I bought it and know for certain that it will rest on my coffee table for a very long time. For someone with a lifelong interest in dinosaurs, birds and art no better book could have come along.
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3: If Audobon had painted over past millions of years...
This is an astonishingly good book on the topic. The art is first-rate, and I appreciate how the text immediately tells me what the animal's name means. I realize a lot of speculation and imagination goes into a work like this, but as long as the reader/viewer keeps in mind that a little license had to be employed, a work like this one can really spark a good deal of awe and wonder. That bucket of chicken from KFC? Really does look related to vicious raptors of "Jurassic Park" fame. Tweety? A fluffy yellow dino-spawn. I think learning about this link between avian dinos and their distant kin has had the effect, for me, of making birds more interesting. I was never an avid avian lover, but looking at them as related to the dinosaurs I always found so fascinating has made the little boogers a lot more interesting to me. This beatiful book might have that impact on you, as well. Final note: The illustrations are kid-friendly, but unlike the other books on this topic, this is not a kids' book. Adults will find much to love here. And it makes a handsome, if somewhat unsettling, coffee table book.
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