Our understanding of dinosaur behaviour has long been hampered by the inevitable lack of evidence from animals that went extinct more than sixty-five million years ago and whose daily behaviours are rarely reflected by the fossil record. Today, with the discovery of new specimens and the development of new and cutting-edge techniques, palaeontologists are making major advances in reconstructing how dinosaurs lived and acted. Uncovering Dinosaur Behavior provides an unparalleled look at this emerging field of science, presenting the latest findings on dinosaur behaviour and explaining how researchers interpret the often minimal and even conflicting information available to them.
David Hone begins by introducing readers to the fundamentals of dinosaur biology, diversity, and evolution, and goes on to describe behaviours across the whole range of species and groups, from feeding and communication to reproduction, sociality, and combat. Speculation about dinosaur behaviour goes back to the earliest scientific studies of these "terrible lizards". Hone traces how frontier science is opening a window onto prehistoric life like never before, and discusses future directions of research in this thrilling and rapidly growing area of paleontology.
Written by one of the world's leading dinosaur experts and featuring accurate colour recreations by paleoartist Gabriel Ugueto along with a wealth of photos and diagrams, Uncovering Dinosaur Behavior is a foundational work on the subject and an invaluable reference for anyone interested in these amazing creatures.
David Hone is a Reader in Zoology at Queen Mary University of London and the author of How Fast Did T. rex Run? Unsolved Questions from the Frontiers of Dinosaur Science (Princeton) and The Tyrannosaur Chronicles: The Biology of the Tyrant Dinosaurs. He has written about dinosaurs for leading publications such as National Geographic, The Guardian, and HuffPost.
Gabriel Ugueto is a leading scientific illustrator and paleoartist whose work has appeared in numerous books, museum exhibits, and documentaries.
"If you want to know what dinosaurs were like as real living, breathing animals, then read this book. David Hone, a leading researcher on dinosaur biology, is an expert guide to the ways that dinosaurs moved, fed, grew, reproduced, and socialized. Authoritative and readable, Uncovering Dinosaur Behavior is both a great piece of scholarship and popular science writing."
– Steve Brusatte, New York Times bestselling author of The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs