1) Dyke, Gareth and Gary Kaiser (editors). Living Dinosaurs: The Evolutionary History of Modern Birds. 2011. Wiley-Blackwell. Hardbound: 422 pages. Price: $129.95 U.S.
SUMMARY: Living Dinosaurs offers a snapshot of our current understanding of the origin and evolution of birds. After slumbering for more than a century, avian palaeontology has been awakened by startling new discoveries on almost every continent. Controversies about whether dinosaurs had real feathers or whether birds were related to dinosaurs have been swept away and replaced by new and more difficult questions: How old is the avian lineage? How did birds learn to fly? Which birds survived the great extinction that ended the Mesozoic Era and how did the avian genome evolve? Answers to these questions may help us understand how the different kinds of living birds are related to one another and how they evolved into their current niches. More importantly, they may help us understand what we need to do to help them survive the dramatic impacts of human activity on the planet.
RECOMMENDATION: A must have for those with an interest in avian paleontology and/or systematics! For more information see here: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/book/10.1002/9781119990475
Shalom & Boker tov, Ian:
ReplyDeleteThis is, actually, a far better monograph than the reprehensible silliness seen at one theropod website (where the research of others is plundered for self-aggrandizement by someone who has never published) in the U.S. Gareth Dyke/Gary Kaiser had done something truly remarkable. I would point to two, brilliant chapters: 4) the late Brad Livezey's 'Progress and obstacles in the phylogenetics of modern birds'; 14) Brent Lindow's 'Bird evolution across the K-Pg boundary and the basal neornithine diversification'. Coupled with Greg Paul's Dinosaurs of the Air, we are now in a position to make the inferences necessary about groups of extant theropod dinosaurs.
Dinosaurily, Stephan Pickering / Chofetz Chayim ben-Avraham
Jewish Dinosaurologist / Heretic Spiritist