Benton’s prose is a model of science writing—energetic without being hyperactive, illustrative without loosing a swarm of irritating metaphors, alive to the reader’s curiosity without pandering to the reader’s ignorance. To Benton, the story of what we know about dinosaurs is also the story of how we know it ... I found myself going back—for solace, I admit—to Michael Benton’s book, where he quotes these remarkable words from John Hutchinson, a professor of evolutionary biomechanics: 'The ground we walk on is that of science itself: clear, reproducible data and tools, a spirit of sharing and professionalism, and open-mindedness.' This is the ground that must be kept open—against the repeated narrowing of the human mind.
Assumption-shifting moments...fill the pages of Dinosaurs Rediscovered. Benton writes movingly about having seen during his own career the birth of a revolution in technologies like chemical analysis, CT scanning, and digital imaging, all adding new dimensions to field techniques ... The book conveys a sense of an entire discipline in a state of giddy upheaval ... In sharp and engaging prose, Dinosaurs Rediscovered covers the history of dinosaur research and the nuts and bolts of how researchers know the things they know ... The final impression of Dinosaurs Rediscovered is one of infectious excitement ... This book is an engrossing and beautifully designed result of that lifelong passion. It belongs on the shelf of every adult collector of dinosaur books.
I defy anyone who is, like me, a non-scientist to read it and not feel a sense of wonder at what palaeontologists now understand ... Benton's excitement...is engagingly articulated ... his achievement is to make [dinosaurs] in his book appear far more real as living organisms than anything that might be achieved by CGI ... Nothing better illustrates the change in our understanding of dinosaurs than the discovery of why they went extinct ... Benton is excellent on...these recent developments, but he is most interesting of all on an unsolved puzzle. We know where the dinosaurs went, but how and when did they originate?
Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay[/caption]
