Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

Accompanying the television series, this is an illustrated history of dinosaurs, from their first appearance in the middle of the Triassic period to their sudden demise, 160 million years later, at the end of the Cretaceous era.

Reviews provided by Syndetics

Booklist Review

Two ways to contemplate the behaviors of the dinosaurs--with clinical restraint and with exuberant imagination--are exemplified by these two titles. The devil in deducing dino behavior is in the paucity of details: the fossil record is fragmentary, its pieces separated by gaps of millions of years. Behavior can be inferred from intent scrutiny of the bones and, in Carpenter's case, the eggs. Since fossilized eggs were sensationally discovered in the Gobi Desert in the 1920s by Roy Chapman Andrews, their study has become a strong specialty in paleontology. Carpenter describes the field's principal finds since Andrews as well as the techniques for examining fossil eggs (microscopy, crystallography), and corrals the knowledge to picture the reproductive, nesting, and possible nurturing activities of dinosaurs. Although not above throwing an occasional wisecrack into his text, Carpenter writes technically and suits best the reader ready for detailed expertise about dinosaur eggs. For minds more attuned to impressionistic drama, Haines scripts a wonderful story of the dinosaurs' Mesozoic heyday. His book spins off from a same-titled BBC-produced series that the Discovery Channel will broadcast next April, and the book's visual provenance is reflected in spectacular imagery. The computer-generated pictures are fitted to the text, which depicts the eat-or-be-eaten life cycle of an individual animal making its living in a Triassic, Jurassic, or Cretaceous environment. Taking some license with what the fossil evidence strictly allows, Haines daubs his stories in color, paces them with predation, and climaxes them in attacks successful or foiled. Starring characters familiar to red-blooded dino fans, such as allosauris and iguanodon, Haines' vibrant and violent scenarios will thrill and awe. --Gilbert Taylor