DINOSAUR BONES

Twenty large, fossilized skeletons pose amid fleshed-out reconstructions of the originals and selected relatives in this dino gallery.

Though dark or atmospherically faded sepia backgrounds lend a superficial visual unity, the illustrations are all stock images, rendered in diverse styles and sometimes blurrily reproduced. Readers may wonder whether the author has even seen them, as the text and pictures are sometimes at odds. The painted portraits accompanying his suggestions that Gallimimus and Dromaeosaurus may have been feathered are bare-skinned, and he neglects to mention the pinions (or is that hair?) on a particularly colorful rendition of Leptoceratops. He also seems more focused on dropping scads of dino names (many of which are not in the index) than in systematically developing the title’s premise. He does explain the significance of large orbital and nasal cavities in fossil skulls, for instance, but not what “bony tendons” even are in one specimen or how an entire skeleton could be reconstructed for Pachycephalosaurus from just a skull. Also, he repeats information here, contradicts himself there, and presents different rationales for the belief that Iguanodon walked on two legs on consecutive spreads.

A dino flop.