Эта книга посвящена необыкновенным рептилиям — динозаврам, владычествовавшим на Земле более 160 миллионов лет. С середины XIX века, когда были найдены их первые окаменевшие скелеты, динозавры владеют воображением не одного поколения людей — и детей, и взрослых. Благодаря терпеливой работе палеонтологов и других ученых, мы с каждым годом узнаем всё больше и больше о динозаврах, среде их обитания, питании и образе жизни.

Книга рассказывает про палеонтологические раскопки возле деревни Морозница в Архангельском крае. Здесь были найдены первые в нашем полушарии остатки ящеров казеид, живших в пермском периоде. На их примере показано, как ученые реконструируют среду обитания и образ жизни древних животных. Книга посвящена палеонтологу Владимиру Ильичу Жегалло.

The discovery of dinosaurs and other large extinct ‘saurians’, a term under which the Victorians commonly lumped ichthyosaurs, plesiosaurs, pterosaurs and their kin, makes exciting reading. The story of how early ‘fossilists’ first found the remains of these ‘primeval monsters’ has been told again and again in popular and semi-popular books about the history of palaeontology. Mary Anning making a living by collecting extinct reptiles along the Dorset coast, William Buckland and Gideon Mantell finding the ‘terrible lizards’ for which Richard Owen was to coin the word ‘Dinosauria’, O. C. Marsh and E. D. Cope fighting over new fossil vertebrates in the American West – all of these well-known stories have almost achieved the status of legends, and have often been retold with little regard for historical or scientific accuracy. <...>

Like the world famous science fiction adventure films Jurassic Park and Jurassic World, the Gyeongnam Goseong Dinosaur World Expo and International Dinosaur Symposium has attracted a vast number of people. This Expo is held every three years at the world famous Goseong Dinosaur Track Site in Korea.

The Fourth Gyeongnam Goseong Dinosaur World Expo, held in 2016, attracted over 1.5 million visitors, including several tens of thousands of foreigners. In addition, millions of students have learned about the dinosaurs of Korea through their being introduced in elementary school, middle school, and high school science textbooks. <...>

Представим себе любое животное. Представим себе любых животных, которых мы иногда видели или о которых хотя бы когда-нибудь слышали.
Представим тропические леса, где вершины деревьев дрожат от криков обезьян и попугаев, а в сырых темных глубинах леса снуют лесные свиньи и муравьеды. Представим обширные степи и саванны, от края и до края заполненные стадами антилоп "гну и зебр, за которыми крадутся львы и гепарды. Представим пустыни, где змеи скользят по песку, а тушканчики, как маленькие кенгуру, скачут через камни. Представим себе леса умеренного пояса и сосновые боры, где олени и лоси ощипывают молодые побеги, а в лесных чащах рыщут стаи волков. Теперь вообразим холодную тундру и ледовую пустыню Северного полюса, где кочуют северные олени, проводя долгие дни холодного лета, наполненного зудом гнуса, а белые медведи во льдах охотятся на тюленей.

Книга посвящена далеким страницам истории органического мира Земли. Автор, ученый-палеонтолог, рассказывает о различных эпизодах эволюции жизни на Земле. Изложение основано на точных научных фактах и совмещено с краткими историческими очерками, написанными в увлекательной и доступной форме. В книге приведены реконструкции наиболее типичных представителей фауны и флоры минувших геологических эпох, а также подводных и наземных ландшафтов, существовавших на нашей планете в различные периоды истории Земли. Для широкого круга читателей, интересующихся историей жизни на Земле, прежде всего, для школьников средних и старших классов. Книга также может быть использована для занятий по палеонтологии и исторической геологии в геологических кружках

The Spanish province of La Rioja is an area of the world where a huge number of dinosaur footprints have been found, with many more likely yet to be discovered. This hilly region has many rock slopes with layers so full of tracks that, if the vegetation, loose rock, and debris could be removed, would yield from 8000 to as many as 25,000 footprints. Using the best estimates from some slopes – that is, the maximum estimate from that partial data – there may be as many as 70,000 footprints.

Tyrannosaurus rex is assuredly the dinosaur with the greatest public visibility, and it has been cast as a heavy in countless fi lms dating back to Harry Hoyt’s (1925) adaptation of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s (1912) Lost World. However, as of 1980, only seven specimens of the dinosaur were known (Larson 2008). In the last three decades, this number has swelled at least sevenfold (Larson 2008), and our knowledge of the relationships, anatomy, and biology of T. rex and its close relatives has expanded dramatically both through new specimens coming to light and through a plethora of analytical studies. This volume had its genesis in a conference held in Rockford, Illinois, on September 16–18, 2005, titled “The Origin, Systematics, and Paleobiology of Tyrannosauridae,” and jointly sponsored by the Burpee Museum of Natural History and Northern Illinois University. The symposium was held in conjunction with the development of the Burpee’s new dinosaur hall, the centerpiece of which was a skeletal reconstruction of “Jane” (BMR P2002.4.1), a relatively complete and very well preserved specimen of a juvenile tyrannosaur recovered by the Burpee Museum in 2002 from Carter County, Montana, and now mounted on display at the museum <...>

There has been a long and distinguished tradition of tracking dinosaurs and other extinct animals in Europe. This tradition dates back to the first scientific report on a set of Permian fossil footprints from Scotland in 1828, which were at first incorrectly interpreted as the spoor of tortoises. This tradition of early track discoveries, and confusion over the trackmakers, continued in the 1830s with the discovery of the controversial Triassic “hand animal” footprint named Chirotherium. Although this was the first fossil footprint ever given a formal Latin name, it was not attributed to the proper trackmaker for almost a century. Even so, some of the leading paleontologists and geologists of the day paid considerable and serious attention to fossil footprints, knowing full well that they shed new light on the history of vertebrates that could not be obtained from the sparse record of bones then available. <...>

Dinosaurs are everywhere these days. They are the most popular exhibits in many museums, the stars of movies and the focus of television documentaries, the pitchmen in advertising campaigns and the subject of gushing articles in magazines and newspapers. Looking at how dinosaurs are portrayed in the popular press, it is easy to lump them together with leprechauns, unicorns, and dragons – creatures of myth and iconic lore that only exist in the imaginations of children and the whimsy of pop culture. But dinosaurs are not creatures of fantasy – they were real animals, of many fantastic shapes and sizes, that dominated terrestrial ecosystems for an astounding span of over 160 million years. They were living, breathing, feeding, moving, reproducing, evolving organisms that originated in the

aftermath of the worst mass extinction in earth history, rose to dominance as a supercontinent was splitting and climates were fluctuating, evolved into some of the largest and most fearsome animals the planet has ever seen, and then suddenly went extinct right at the same time that a giant comet or asteroid slammed into the earth and supervolcanoes were belching rivers of lava. And perhaps most astonishing of all, these ancient creatures, so often symbols of lethargy and failure, were the ancestors of one of the most successful groups of living animals: the birds. <...>