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?

It is a fascinating story, and Mr. Benton tells it both expertly and entertainingly ... There is probably no grand life lesson to be learned from the fate of the dinosaurs, but Mr. Benton’s deeply engaging book instructively shows us, yet again, how advances in technology have converted mere speculation into testable science.

Benton has the grace and integrity to admit towards the end of his book that the reconstructions might well be proved wrong in the future; but what he does have to say is fascinating. In a manner this is a bold reiteration of the scientific method itself. Disproving can be more informative than advancing a theory ... In part this book seems a rebuke to a notorious quip by Luis Alvarez, who said: 'I don’t like to say bad things about paleontogists [sic], but they’re really not very good scientists. They’re more like stamp collectors.' This book charts the shift from the work being about a trowel in a desert to a computer in a laboratory ... There is a sense in which this book asks the simple questions and then shows the difficulty of coming up with answers ... Why has there been such a spike in interest in the dinosaurs? I would suggest that part of it is in catastrophe thinking. These were a dominant species, and they are now extinct. Benton moves the argument on by looking as much at how they lived as at how they died, although there is a fascinating appendix listing a hundred different hypotheses for what caused the mass extinction (I never knew about the caterpillars being advanced as the culprits).

This engaging book by one of the field's most prominent paleontologists is as much about the evolution of dinosaur paleobiology as the evolution of dinosaurs themselves. Highly recommended for enthusiasts of these areas.

...insightful ... This enjoyable primer will leave layreaders with a new appreciation for how far modern science has come in understanding 'long-dead animals, represented now by skeletons and isolated bones.'