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Dinosaur Odyssey: Fossil Threads in the Web of Life Hardcover – 20 November 2009

by Scott D. Sampson (Author), Philip Currie (Foreword)

37 ratings

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This captivating book, laced with evocative anecdotes from the field, gives the first holistic, up-to-date overview of dinosaurs and their world for a wide audience of readers. Situating these fascinating animals in a broad ecological and evolutionary context, leading dinosaur expert Scott D. Sampson fills us in on the exhilarating discoveries of the past twenty-five years, the most active period in the history of dinosaur paleontology, during which more 'new' species were named than in all prior history. With these discoveries - and the most recent controversies - in mind, Sampson reconstructs the odyssey of the dinosaurs from their humble origins on the supercontinent Pangaea, to their reign as the largest animals the planet has ever known, and finally to their abrupt demise. Much more than the story of who ate whom way back when, "Dinosaur Odyssey" places dinosaurs in an expansive web of relationships with other organisms and demonstrates how they provide a powerful lens through which to observe the entire natural world. Addressing topics such as extinction, global warming, and energy flow, "Dinosaur Odyssey" finds that the dinosaurs' story is, in fact, a major chapter in our own story.

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Product details

ISBN-13 : 978-0520241633
ISBN-10 : 0520241630
Hardcover : 352 pages
Language: : English

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Amazon.com: 31 reviews

A. E. Price

Dr Scott the paleontologist writes a book for grown ups!

8 June 2014 - Published on Amazon.com

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My daughter is a Dinosaur Train fanatic. It's a great show, and she has learned a lot, not only about dinosaurs, but about ecosystems and biology in general. On a recent trip to the Field Museum in Chicago to see the dinosaur fossils in person with her I found this book in the gift shop, with a sticker pointing out that it was by the Dr Scott from the show. Of course, I had to read it. It's a very good, up to date, summary of current thought on dinosaurs, by someone with great passion for the subject. It is very understandable even for someone without an extensive scientific background. And it does a good job of explaining why an understanding of the earth's biological past is still relevant today. My daughter isn't quite four, and this is definitely a book for grown ups, so it's not a book that I can share with her immediately, but I am getting a lot of joy out of sharing her interest in dinosaurs and this book answered a lot of the questions that the more pre school appropriate books had left in my mind.

11 people found this helpful

LastRanger

Visit to a Lost World

13 November 2012 - Published on Amazon.com

Verified Purchase

Dinosaurs have been popular since the day they were discovered. Children everywhere obsess with them, rattling off their tongue twisting names with ease. Some of those children grow up to be paleontologist who are still obsessed with the "Terrible Lizards" and even write books about them. I'm so glad they do! Scott Sampson's engrossing book takes you on a journey back back to the Mesozoic for a close look at the Dinosaurs and the world they lived in. Look around you at the plants and animals that live in today's world, they are all part of a complex web of interdependent organisms, from bacteria to blue whales, each sharing a common thread---DNA. Life in the Age of Reptiles was no different. Sampson covers a multitude of subjects; plants, birds and mammals, just to name a few. I found the chapter on Ceratopsian evolution to be particularly interesting. But the main theme of the book is the ecology of the dinosaur's world, the little things that live in the soil, on plants and animals and in the air. For the most part these little things leave little or no fossil record so their existence is somewhat theoretical, but they were there and their effect on the environment was staggering. Also examined is the geology and climate of this long gone world. In the end I was more than satisfied with Sampson's effort and rate this book right up there with Bakker's The Dinosaur Heresies. Incidentally, the color plates came across beautifully on both the Kindle (black and white) and the I-Pad (color). I had no technical problems with this Kindle edition.
LastRanger

4 people found this helpful

S. Howell

If you like dinosaurs, you'll love this book

14 March 2012 - Published on Amazon.com

Verified Purchase

Dinosaur Odyssey takes you on a dinosaur-centric tour of the epic of evolution that literally starts with the Big Bang. The scope of this 332-page book is every bit as expansive as that sentence implies. By page 97, Dr. Scott has treated his readers to clear and entertaining discussions of the Big Bang, geothermal processes, continental drift theory, ecology, evolution, and weather patterns. In the second half of the book, Dr. Scott discusses more obviously paleontological topics, including Mesozoic food chains, predator-prey relationships, climate change and its effect on dinosaur evolution, and inevitably, extinction. There's even a chapter devoted to explaining exactly why Jurassic Park couldn't happen. Along the way, Dr. Scott weaves in fascinating information about the various dinosaur discoveries paleontologists have made in the past twenty-five years.

Processing all that information is no small task. Fortunately, Dr. Scott takes Albert Einstein's principle of science writing to heart: "Make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler."

Take for example, his discussion of plate tectonics in Chapter 4, in which Dr. Scott uses the image of a lava lamp to describe the action of convection forces in the Earth's mantle (p. 56).

There's plenty of humor sprinkled throughout the book as well. For example, in describing the paleontological debate over whether the T. Rex was primarily a hunter or a scavenger of dead meat, Dr. Scott makes the wry comment that the scavenger theory "effectively relegate[s] Tyrannosaurus to the status of prehistory's biggest maggot."

If you love dinosaurs, you'll love this book.

(Read more at my blog, BostonWriters.wordpress.com.)

4 people found this helpful

Strv 74

Above and beyond what is normally presented

31 May 2012 - Published on Amazon.com

Verified Purchase

Usually those of us who are not paleontologists but still find the subject interesting end up with large book filled with fantastic pictures of all sorts of dinosaurs. The Information in those books are then very general with some timescales and a discussion on why dinosaurs went extinct.

This book is so much more. Mr Sampson takes a grip on all the aspects of our planet during the era of the dinosaurs and put it all into a perspective. This pedagogic method to explain and educate works very well. You learn things about the period that have a far larger impact on the history of dinosaurs than just describing each one of them in great detail. Having read a number of books on this subject I have to admit that this one is far superior to most of them. Read this book and become educated!

What this book is not is a coffee table book with large beautiful pictures of dinosaurs. There are illustrations but they are not up to the standard of the text. Since the text is so superior this is a minor problem.

The only thing about this book that I would like to criticize has probably nothing to do with the author. This is a heavy book with wide pages and far to small font size for the text. This reduces reading speed and actually makes reading a little tiresome. The Publisher should have considered that and put in more pages instead and with larger font size text.

But, this is a great book that you will be very happy you read and proud to own.

3 people found this helpful

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