Journey back in time to the Triassic, Jurassic and Cretaceous periods with Illumisaurus, coming face-to-face with prehistory's most spectacular dinosaurs, plants and animals. Bring this lost world to kaleidoscopic life with your magic three-colour viewing lens (included). With your lens in hand, discover amazing places and the creatures that roamed them many millions of years ago. Your green lens reveals a location, spanning 9 ancient land masses across millions of years. Learn how these places transformed over time to become the habitats of the most spectacular life on Earth. Your red lens brings to life the mightiest beasts ever to walk the planet: the dinosaurs. Meet a T. rex up close, run with packs of velociraptors and marvel at the gigantic brachiosaurus as you discover how these animals came to rule the Earth. Your blue lens uncovers the wildlife that lived alongside and after the dinosaurs, including monstrous dragonflies, woolly mammoths and fungi taller than trees. Fact pages fill in the details and guide you through a world bursting with life and colour. The latest in the bestselling Illumi series, Illumisaurus is a hidden-world adventure with a fascinating scientific angle, and the perfect gift fordinosaur enthusiasts 7 years and older. Innovative illustrations from award-winning design duo Carnovsky make this a natural history like no other, with hundreds of places, plants and creatures to discover on three layers of detailed artwork. How many dinosaurs will you find on your prehistoric journey? See 3 images in 1 with the eye-boggling Illumi series, featuring magic-lens artwork from creative design duo Carnovsky. Dinosaurs, animals, the human body, and even ghosts are envisioned like never before in this groundbreaking series. The explosions of colour on each page are in fact three distinct layers of illustrations, each exploring a different aspect of a fascinating subject. Use the three-colour lens to reveal the hidden details on each one, then read all about the topic on in-depth fact pages. There's always something new to discover in Illumi! Also available from the Illumi series: Illuminatlas, Illuminature, Illuminightmare and Illumanatomy.

A journey through the great mass-extinction events that have shaped our Earth. Drawing on the latest research, this timely and original book lays out the current scientific understanding of mass extinction on our planet. Cutting-edge techniques across biology, chemistry, physics and geology have transformed our knowledge of the deep past, including the discovery of a previously unknown mass extinction. This compelling evidence, revealing a series of environmental crises resulting in the near-collapse of life on Earth, illuminates our current dilemmas in exquisite detail. Beginning with the oldest, Professor Michael J. Benton takes us through the ‘big five’ die-outs: the Late Ordovician, which set the evolution of the first animals on an entirely new course; the late Devonian, apparently brought on by global warming; the cataclysmic End-Permian, also known as the Great Dying, which wiped out over 90% of all life on Earth; and, book-ending the age of the dinosaurs, the newly discovered Carnian Pluvial Event and the End-Cretaceous asteroid. He examines how global warming, acid rain, ocean acidification, erupting volcanoes and meteorite impact have affected conditions on Earth, the drastic consequences for global ecology, and how life in turn survived, adapted and evolved. Benton’s expert retelling of the scientific breakthroughs are illustrated throughout with photographs of fossils and fieldwork, scenes from the laboratory and artistic reconstructions of ancient environments that bring us face to face with long-lost life forms. We learn how scientists have developed revolutionary new tools to uncover ancient extinction events and processes in forensic detail, how they model evolving systems, and how they are honing their methods to improve our understanding of the deep past. New research allows us to link long-ago upheavals to crises in our current age, the Anthropocene, with important consequences for us all.

If you want to know how we know what we know about dinosaurs, read this book! Steve Brusatte

Startling new fossil finds are the lifeblood of modern palaeobiology. Giant sauropod dinosaur skeletons from Patagonia, dinosaurs with feathers from China, and even a tiny dinosaur tail in Burmese amber complete down to every detail of its filament-like feathers, skin, bones and mummified tail muscles inspire awe in a global audience enthralled by the idea of these great creatures walking the earth. Dinosaurs are of perennial interest to all ages, as illustrated by the huge range of dino-themed films, books and live attractions, from the enduring popularity of the Jurassic Park franchise to the success of London s immersive Dinosaurs in the Wild experience.

In the past twenty years, dinosaur study has changed from natural history to testable science. New technologies have revealed secrets locked in the bones in a way nobody predicted we can now work out the colour of dinosaurs, their bite forces, speeds and parental care as well as how they came to die out.This groundbreaking book illustrates how science has replaced speculation and how our understanding of dinosaurs and their world hascompletely changed. The subject has never been so vigorous, has never changed so fast, and has never been so attractive to so many.

In the past 100 years, many dozens of extraordinary dinosaurs and other fossil amphibians, reptiles, birds and mammals have been found in the former Soviet Union. The Permo-Triassic of the Ural Mountains in particular have produced hundreds of superb specimens, and many of the dinosaurs from Mongolia are unique. Written by a group of Russian and Western paleontologists, this volume reveals a range of fossil faunas, in particular reptiles, that have been little known outside Russia. This is the first time that much of this large body of research has been introduced in English. Chapters contain accounts of the history of collecting, the relevant stratigraphy and geogical setting, and the major animal groups prepared by this auspicious collaboration of researchers. More than 300 illustrations and line drawings provide a clear, visual record. This volume will be of interest to graduate students and researchers in paleontology and zoology.

The greatest mass extinction in Earth's history happened some 251 million years ago. In this cataclysm at least 90% of life was killed, both on land and in the sea, almost bringing evolution to a halt. What caused destruction on such an unimaginable scale? Was it the impact of a huge meteorite, or prolonged volcanic eruption in Siberia? In this acclaimed book, now updated to include the most recent research and findings, Michael Benton assembles all the evidence and gives his verdict.

Tony T-Rex's Family Album is a humorous history of dinosaurs as told by Earth's last surviving dinosaur, Tony. Tony pens a no-holds-barred family history, and the stories that surface reveal the defining characteristics of some of the most memorable creatures from the Jurassic and Cretaceous periods. Tony's memoir includes tales about his great-great-great-grandpa 'Greedy Guts' Bill, the Brachiosaurus who was known to eat stones to help with indigestion, and beak-mouthed Aunt Norni the Sinornithosaurus, the first female dinosaur ever to achieve flight. It also presents the family's blackest sheep - a Ceratosaurus called Horace 'The Horn' who, in a time of great scarcity and hunger, took a bite out of one his hunting buddies and pursued a lifestyle of cannibalism. Featuring the quirky illustrations of Rob Hodgson, Tony T-Rex's Family Album stands apart from the numerous dinosaur books on the market for its characterful creatures and humorous approach to palaeontology. It is the first in a series that brings archaeology alive for young children.

There are few stories more remarkable than the evolution of life on earth. This Very Short Introduction presents a succinct guide to the key episodes in that story - from the very origins of life four million years ago to the extraordinary diversity of species around the globe today. Beginning with an explanation of the controversies surrounding the birth of life itself, each following chapter tells of a major breakthrough that made new forms of life possible: including sex and multicellularity, hard skeletons, and the move to land. Along the way, we witness the greatest mass extinction, the first forests, the rise of modern ecosystems, and, most recently, conscious humans. Introducing ideas from a range of scientific disciplines, from evolutionary biology and earth history, to geochemistry, palaeontology, and systematics, Michael Benton explains how modern science pieces the evidence in this vast evolutionary puzzle together, to build up an accessible and up-to-date picture of the key developments in the history of life on earth. ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.

"The focus is the most severe mass extinction known in earth's history....The science on which the book is based is up-to-date, thorough, and balanced. Highly recommended."--"Choice"
Today it is common knowledge that the dinosaurs were wiped out by a meteorite impact 65 million years ago that killed half of all species then living. Far less known is a much greater catastrophe that took place at the end of the Permian period 251 million years ago: ninety percent of life was destroyed, including saber-toothed reptiles and their rhinoceros-sized prey on land, as well as vast numbers of fish and other species in the sea.
This book documents not only what happened during this gigantic mass extinction but also the recent rekindling of the idea of catastrophism. Was the end-Permian event caused by the impact of a huge meteorite or comet, or by prolonged volcanic eruption in Siberia? The evidence has been accumulating through the 1990s and into the new millennium, and Michael Benton gives his verdict at the end of the volume.
From field camps in Greenland and Russia to the laboratory bench, "When Life Nearly Died" involves geologists, paleontologists, environmental modelers, geochemists, astronomers, and experts on biodiversity and conservation. Their working methods are vividly described and explained, and the current disputes are revealed. The implications of our understanding of crises in the past for the current biodiversity crisis are also presented in detail. 46 illustrations.

This novel is a work of fiction; Names, places, Characters, and incidents either are the products of the Author's imagination/and/or use fictional; Any resemblance to actual persons, (except where used by permission, or the Author himself) living or dead, events, or locales, is entirely coincidental; NOTE: Although this book is fictional, some of the ideas and events are based upon the personal life of the Author. Some Cities, states, counties and places are real. This will give the reader a general idea of the time, place and era the Author is using. Written with all ages in mind, this story focus on secrets and mysteries which are uncovered when Mike Benton arrives in Ellisville to look over his inheritance of the huge three story Benton Mansion and the Plantation left to him by his late uncle, John Benton. NOTE: While this book is written with all age groups in mind, and while it is semi-Christian, and based upon the faith the boys and Mike have in the Lord, there are a few words and scenes which vary, but are the everyday life style of people. This book is meant for entertainment and to help the readers, regardless of age, to know what it's like just to be human.

Here is the story of Ice Age beasts as told from the unique perspective of Maisie the woolly mammoth. Maisie's Ice Age 'who's who' reveals the defining characteristics of some of the most memorable creatures from prehistoric times. Maisie's memoir includes tales about Stella the sabre-toothed tiger, the golden girl of the Ice Age, whose megawatt smile contained 25 cm canines; the villain we all love to hate, Trevor the Titanoboa, a 13 m mega-snake who could swallow a crocodile whole; and the slightly more camera-shy Gavin the Giant Ape, who is rumoured to have inspired the myth of the Yeti! Featuring the quirky illustrations of Rob Hodgson, Maisie Mammoth's Memoirs stands apart from other prehistoric beast titles with its characterful creatures and humorous approach to palaeontology based on some of the latest scientific research - look out for tips on how to defrost a woolly mammoth! It is the second in a series that brings animals from the distant past alive for young children.