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Silly title
by Dr Marc Jones in United Kingdom
The description for this book states that "fossil evidence shows that the ancestors of modern reptiles lived alongside the dinosaurs" and this is presumably considered an adequate explanation for the title which is clearly a ploy to grab attention and sell more books. However, it is not: 1. fossil evidence shows that the ancestors of birds and mammals (and fish and insects etc.) also lived alongside the dinosaurs so the association with modern reptiles on this grounds is totally unfounded. 2. No scientist that understands even the basics of modern phylogenetics would ever refer to modern reptiles as dinosaurs to which they are only distantly related. 3. The vast majority of available evidence suggests that birds are the direct descendants of theropod dinosaurs (and thus much more closely related to dinosaurs than crocs and lizards etc.). Therefore in order to justify the title this book should be about birds not crocodiles, not lizards, not tuatara, and not snakes. Its said that you should not judge a book by its cover but when a book title is this ill founded it is difficult not to suspect the rest of the book was put together with equal misunderstanding and ignorance.