Thames & Hudson
Columbia University Press
“I AM often asked ‘what is the point of palaeontology?'”, writes Michael Benton towards the end of his frustrating new book, The Dinosaurs Rediscovered. I often asked myself the same question while I was reading it.
Benton is a renowned dinosaur palaeontologist at the University of Bristol, UK, and the author of many good books on the subject. His aim is laudable and timely: to tell the story of how, over the past 40 years, the study of dinosaurs has been transformed from an antiquated branch of natural history into a highly rigorous scientific discipline.
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He knows the story inside out, having been one of its protagonists. But insider knowledge isn’t always the best vantage point. Much of the material in the book reads like a textbook on how to do dinosaur palaeontology and an introduction to the arcane academic debates within the field.
Hence my frustration. There is a good story to be told about how modern techniques – such as electron microscopy, cladistics, CT scanning and biomechanics – have revealed things that would have been considered unknowable scarcely 50 years ago.
These findings include how the dinosaurs rose to dominance and how their family tree fits together, as well as how they behaved, grew so large and even what colour they were. These are all fascinating discoveries, but by concentrating on the process, all too often Benton buries them in interminable detail – and the prolific use of technical diagrams doesn’t help at all.
But it isn’t all a slog. Sometimes, inside knowledge is an asset, as it is in a chapter on how fossils are discovered, dug up and prepared. As a lifelong dinosaur fan who has spent many fruitless hours scouring beaches, cliffs and gullies for bones and teeth, this was a revelation. The section on the extinction of the dinosaurs is also fantastic, finally revealing Benton’s true colours as a science communicator and storyteller.
“Inside knowledge is sometimes an asset, as it is in a chapter on how fossils are discovered, dug up and prepared”
Dinosaur devotees and palaeontology students will find much of value in this book, but for a more easily digestible primer on the new discoveries, I would first reach for Steve Brusatte’s (HarperCollins). Or, indeed, the latest book from another veteran populariser of palaeontology, Donald Prothero at California State Polytechnic University.
Where Benton focuses on method, Prothero goes for the thrill of the chase. The Story of the Dinosaurs in 25 Discoveries does exactly what it says on the tin. It is a grand tour through those iconic finds, from megalosaurus, named in 1824, to the Chinese feathered dinosaurs of the 1990s, via other must-see attractions including stegosaurus, diplodocus, tyrannosaurus and triceratops.
With his latest book, Prothero follows a tried and tested formula. He has already had hits with The Story of Life in 25 Fossils and The Story of Earth in 25 Rocks, so why change a winning framework?
And while there isn’t a lot here that is new, there is pleasure in reading familiar stories. The listicle format is also a useful vehicle for easily introducing ideas such as cladistics that Benton makes such heavy weather of.
Yes, palaeontology has a point: to help us understand the origins, evolution and history of life. To that end, it is a shame that both books were published too soon to react to news about a fossil deposit preserving what could be debris of the asteroid strike that very probably killed the dinosaurs 66 million years ago. The authors of that claim have been criticised for over-interpreting the evidence and I would have loved to have found out what Benton and Prothero make of it.
