Feathered Dragons edited by Phillip J. Currie et al, Indiana University Press, $49.95, ISBN 0253343739 Reviewed by Douglas Palmer
WHEN he first described three-toed fossil footprints, some gigantic, back in the 1830s, the Reverend Professor Edward Hitchcock of Amherst College in Massachusetts attributed them to 鈥減readamic birds鈥�. Now we know that the tracks were made by dinosaurs but, as Feathered Dragons reveals, they were probably feathered dinosaurs 鈥� not unlike birds.
This is a superb overview of the past decade鈥檚 discoveries of feathered dinosaurs. It has 23 international experts essaying how dino-birds evolved, their relationship to true birds and the evolution of feathers and flight.
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It鈥檚 great stuff, technical in places but well illustrated and with some excellent writing by the likes of Bob Bakker, who reinstates Hitchcock as an American scientific hero and 鈥淔ather of Jurassic Park鈥�.