Discovering Dinosaurs

by Bob Walters, James Seward

Describes how the study of fossilized remains has given paleontologists information on the dinosaurs

79 pages, Paperback

First published October 7, 2014

About the author

This is the disambiguation profile for otherwise unseparated authors publishing as Bob Walters

See also:
Robert E. Walters, scientist
Robert E. Walters, for works on SQL

Reviews

[BigJohn · Rating 3 out of 5]

I had been looking for a book on dinosaurs for a while, and wanted something very specific. I wanted illustrations, and descriptions of the dinosaurs, including the time they would be found, so I could avoid the embarrassment of pitting two dinosaurs together in a fight for life when they were actually millions of years apart in time. I also wanted it to have been a fairly recent book, as I know things change quickly in that scientific world. Discovering Dinosaurs seemed to fit the bill nicely in all those regards, and was well-reviewed to boot.

For the most part, this book delivered everything I was looking for. The book is organized first by period (Triassic, Cretaceous, Jurrasic) and then by type of dinosaur (Sauropods, Ornithopods, Armor, Theropods, etc.) which was a neat way of seeing the different variety in the same family (like the Triceratopses and Ankylosaurs). In each brief description, there is information about the naming of the dinosaurs, where it has been discovered, and its scientific etymology.

There are definitely a few shortcomings, though. For instance, there is no index, which really makes it tough to find where that dinosaur you were just reading about was. I read one entry that mentioned another dinosaur that was in the book, but had to search page-by-page until I found it. Not very friendly. Also notably missing was any types of Pteradons. I don't recall that the book was only covering land-based dinos, but it seemed that flying dinos would be a natural extension of the prevailing theme of connecting the dinosaurs to their bird descendants. And lastly, I would have appreciated something that indicated when each particular dinosaur had been discovered.

The only thing I didn't like about the provided content was a lot of the speculation of how some of the dinos looked. That may have been a personal thing, but it seemed odd to me that they would say "it may have had a sail" or "it may have been colored" when there didn't seem to be much supporting evidence. Ah, well. It's still got great illustrations and fascinating information. I think I was a bit older than its targeted demographic, but I still found it a good reference.

[Naomi Gaca · Rating 5 out of 5]

Discovering Dinosaurs by, Robert Walters and Tess Kissinger
Although this book is long and has a lot of information in it I would still classify it as an older primary non-fiction. It explains what a dinosaur is, what a paleontologist is, how we know what we do about dinosaurs, information about hundreds of different types of dinosaurs, and how we believe they eventually became extinct. The explanations in this book are aimed at being more basic. It goes through a timeline of all the different periods when dinosaurs lived with illustrations to supplement the information. It even talks about how the earth changed over time and the dinosaurs had to evolve to survive these changes. Even though most children in this age category might not make it through all of the information in this book they would definitely enjoy the way that the book is put together.

I paired this book with...

How Do Dinosaurs Go To School by, Jane Yolen
This is a book from a silly fiction series about how dinosaurs would act if they were still around today. There are illustrations of different types of dinosaurs doing silly things. I would use this paired book in my classroom to help illustrate to the children how big a dinosaur would really be in comparison to things that we have around today. The illustrations in the book do a really great job of pointing this out. This is why I paired these two books together.