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.)