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Title: The Simon & Schuster Encyclopedia of Dinosaurs and Prehistoric Creatures : A Visual Who's Who of Prehistoric Life by Douglas Palmer, Colin Harrison, Barry Cox, R.J.G. Savage, Brian Gardiner ISBN: 0-684-86411-8 Publisher: Simon & Schuster Pub. Date: 05 October, 1999 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $40.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 4 (4 reviews)
Rating: 3
Summary: Engaging at first, but then the flaws ...
Comment: This book looked great at first, but then, on closer inspection, the drawings are second-rate, the information is thin, and the inaccuracies mount. Yet, there are no real alternatives that seek to comprehensively catalogue ancient life. I'd still buy it, but my enthusiasm has waned.
Rating: 3
Summary: On the second thought...
Comment: Several months after acquiring the book I leaf through it and wonder how I could have given it such a high rating as I did. It has flaws throughout!
- The book appears to have a drastic shortage of species to list - it is only half as thick as Simon and Schuster's Encyclopedia of Animals - despite the fact that on numerous occasions they list but one or two species from a thirty-species family;
- The art is severely degraded from the above mentioned encyclopedia of animals. While I can see the puzzlement concerning the colors of the creatures' hides, there is no excuse for the the sloppy drawings of several of the animals! If you make a conjecture, please, be sure to follow through! On several of the animals the hair cover fails to obey the laws of physics, and most of the amphibians look like a horrid joke.
- The information is sketchy at best - on numerous occasions special biological mechanisms are mentioned (like a new jaw bone arrangement for the fishes, and the skull structures of the early land animals), yet are never explained in function. Almost all species are captioned with the basics like weight and dimensions followed with senseless filler.
- The between-section class summarizations and the cladistic graphs are also very, very basic. While I understand that the book was not intended for specialists, even the basic layman will find the charts a bit "dumbed down".
This book is flashy and artful, but lacking, lacking a great lot.
Rating: 5
Summary: An incredible work
Comment: I have always longed for such a book. Probably it's a grave mistake on my part to make that the firt sentense of a review, but still. I daresay, anyone who has ever been in the very least intereste in paleontology has always longed for this sort of tome. The authors have satisfied both our love of visuals ( pictures are abundant - they accompiny every entry, in full blazing color by very trustworthy artists, generally sure to catch anyone's eye) and our love of the unknown ( this is the first non-specialist book that I have seen that goes beyond the everyday banal creatures like the pachycephalosaurus and the pterosaurids). This book is sheer pleasure while doing any sort of research, even for the specialists who need solid information. Perhaps there isn't quite enough data with every entry ( due to page limits), but the information that is included is accurate and up-to-date. This is a very good book.
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Title: The SIMON & SCHUSTER ENCYCLOPEDIA OF ANIMALS : A VISUAL WHO'S WHO OF THE WORLD'S CREATURES by Philip Whitfield ISBN: 0684852373 Publisher: Simon & Schuster Pub. Date: 02 November, 1998 List Price(USD): $50.00 |
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Title: Walking with Prehistoric Beasts by Tim Haines, Daren Horley, BBC Wildlife Magazine ISBN: 0789478293 Publisher: DK Publishing Pub. Date: November, 2001 List Price(USD): $29.95 |
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Title: Dinosaur Encyclopedia by David Lambert, Darren Naish, Liz Wyse ISBN: 0789479354 Publisher: DK Publishing Pub. Date: 01 October, 2001 List Price(USD): $29.99 |
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Title: Smithsonian Handbooks: Mammals (Smithsonian Handbooks) by Juliet Clutton-Brock, Don E. Wilson, Dorling Kindersley Publishing ISBN: 0789484048 Publisher: DK Publishing Pub. Date: 01 March, 2002 List Price(USD): $20.00 |
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Title: Dinosaurus: The Complete Guide to Dinosaurs by Steve Parker ISBN: 1552977722 Publisher: Firefly Books Pub. Date: October, 2003 List Price(USD): $49.95 |
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